Panzerfaust (DayZ)

Oh, please. You've clearly never spent any prolonged period of time away from the coast, I see. If you had, you'd realize that the attitude most people take up there is shoot on sight and if you manage to survive and defend yourself even once you're marked as a bandit. Just yesterday, I was moving through the forest near one of the airfields up north when suddenly I came under fire near a deer stand I saw. I took cover, located the source of the bullets, and returned fire. The guy I was shooting at looked like he was fresh off of the beach, he even still had the starter backpack. I fired a few shots at him and missed, he made a break for it to get to another patch of trees and as he did I wounded him. He made it to behind the trees, bandaged himself, and peeked out of cover to shoot at me. I was faster and put two shots into him from my Enfield, and that was the end of things. I then promptly morphed into a bandit and lost everything in my backpack, only to un-morph back into a survivor and lose everything in my backpack again about 20 minutes later. The humanity system IS broken, and anyone who's not experienced that firsthand is not qualified to post about it.

Rocket has already said that he's not going to remove or even restrict PVP. The PVP flag system (or any kind of system limiting PVP) is a bad idea within the context of this mod and won't ever happen, sorry.

One is a bad idea because the good things should be away from the initial spawn zone. Two should be out of the question. This is not meant to be that kind of game. Five is a bit too gamey as well, in my opinion.

I think that having some manner of distinguishing habitual bandits from normal survivors who happened to shoot a few people is probably a good idea. However, the Humanity system needs major modifications as it is not a viable tool for that purpose as-is. However, if the bandit skins are causing major technical problems then I think that the case for removal is stronger.

How bout no

And that can be easily fixed by evenly distributing spawn locations around the southern coast. A few people will probably get killed because they weren't careful enough when they were heading inland, but they'll learn eventually.

You and I both know that that's not practical unless you want to DRASTICALLY increase the amount of resources available. Two weeks down the line, any newcomers to the game will be boned because there won't be any supplies left. You have the small corners you have to cut in order to make something like this feasible to begin with in a virtual format (like respawning loot), and those are acceptable to do away with. The overall aims of the mod can still be achieved with comparatively minor sacrifices in order to make it playable.

Turkey, your sarcasm is noted. Realistic is defined as: interested in, concerned with, or based on what is real or practical. Respawning loot is one of those compromises you can make and still have the overall experience approach realism. Could the respawn times on loot be turned up? Yes, and a good part of me thinks they should be. EDIT: So let's make the environment a bit more difficult to survive against. I'm glad you realized that you can't force people to play the game they way you want them to play it, good for you. Make zombies more difficult to deal with indoors, add maybe 30% more zombies, and add the occasional small group (2-3) of roaming zombies outside of town. To be honest though, all you're going to wind up doing is making the highwaymen and bandits team up with more like-minded people. Still, I do think it would make things more interesting overall.

Agreed. What if my power goes out or something?

Playing the game on their terms means bending over and letting them shoot you. Try actually firing back and killing the whole lot of those assholes and see how it feels.

Here's a challenge for you two. Start playing the game the way the people you're bashing play it, even if it's just for a day or two. I've wasted enough time explaining to you why people shoot other people. If you're really too short sighted to see that shooting people goes far beyond infantile griefing then attempting to have a rational debate with you people is an exercise in futility. Try experiencing things from the other side. I'll post it again in case you didn't read it the first time: 2. Arma 2 is NOT the kind of game that attracts 13 year olds who have one hand in their pants and another on the mouse so they can shoot people. Even if they convince Mommy to buy it for them, they probably won't stick around long (I shouldn't have to explain why. Also, forget one of them figuring out how to install the mod). The vast majority of l33t$n1p3r$ who shoot people for the sake of shooting them fall into that demographic, which statistically probably doesn't even qualify for minority status in this game. The profile of those who shoot others is probably closer to the paranoid guy who (rightfully) distrusts Joe Blow on the internet and anything he says and wants to protect his stuff that he worked to get or, alternately, the person who is interested in grabbing what the other guy has because it's convenient and also has the former benefit mixed in. Survival comes into the mix because you will eventually make contact with other players, hostile or otherwise, when you're attempting to get more food/water/bullets. It's not like they spawn in completely random areas of the map, they spawn in certain areas which eventually forces people to meet. Some of those people will be hostile, and that's the end of that. As far as any quick fixes for PVP go: Remember what the devs said. They're adding more consequence to shooting people. Personally, I think the best solution to keep everybody happy is to increase the noise level of long guns by a slight degree and to add zombies that roam around outside of towns (IE in forests and whatnot). That way the playing field is more even, as the majority of PVP encounters that I've seen have been people from a forest edge engaging people in town who can't shoot back because of the zombie problem.

+1. I'm done playing specifically because of that. In a real-life situation' date=' people are going to turn into animals. However, the incidents that followed Katrina or any other massive disaster were minor compared to the number of people involved. There's also the mental aspect that isn't considered. A lot of people carry guns and wave guns around (street hoods mugging someone) but don't have the guts to pull the trigger. Gamers are conditioned to feel nothing when killing people in a game, so it's no problem to simply massacre people by the truckload. So the experiment is already invalid. Thus why I said to force things on players who are murderers to reflect a diminished mental state. [/quote'] You're right about Katrina. If the entire city had started looting and pillaging things would have been completely out of control. Nevertheless, I'm merely using that example to show that in certain situations people will act absolutely vicious. I don't think it's a far stretch of the imagination to picture something somewhat like what's going on in this mod right now (probably with less military equipment being thrown around, though) happening in the real world if any of this stuff actually happened. A zombie apocalypse would be several orders of magnitude more dangerous and certainly more psychologically jarring, and the ratio of people involved in that kind of behavior would most likely go way, way up.

I see someone's never been under fire whilst toting an M4, a Coyote Backpack (not the patrol pack), NVGs and a GPS. Losing all that stuff was almost a relief because I got so anxious when people started shooting at me.

That's utter nonsense. If the person who has you in their sights with a decent weapon is a good shot you're dead. PvP basically requires some level of equality. Would you consider it still PvP if a bunch of them weren't armed? Because they might as well not be when it's a pistol or shotgun versus an assault rifle. It's like being the spear chucking natives going against gatling armed British troops in Africa. Hardly much of a game. Honestly, unless the person has hours and hours of shooting experience in ArmA, and unless you're caught out in the middle of an open field/standing still (not really a smart move to begin with) you're on more even ground than you think if you have any kind of long rifle or even just a shotgun with slugs. The most dangerous time to be caught is when you're looting some guy's corpse in an open field, you're a sitting duck then. When I was ambushed by the guy in question I was investigating a house near the edge of a forest. When the shooting started I vaulted over a fence and ran into the woods and was able to return fire from there. Again, unless the guy is using an aimbot or is an exceptionally good shot, there's usually a way to fight back or evade until you CAN fight back. If you're in a situation where you can do neither of those things you need to act under the assumption that you're being watched and you need to be as erratic a target as possible. It's difficult, but it's certainly not utter nonsense as you suggest.

Not gonna happen. THERE ARE NOT EVER GOING TO BE ANY ARTIFICIAL RESTRICTIONS ON PVP. PUT THE PIPE DOWN AND LEARN TO DEAL WITH IT, PLEASE. Next...

Griff? Griff! The loonies are acting up again!

Just giving you a heads up - you're not going to have anyone to shoot at if something isn't done about it. "The game has a title that I think means something' date=' that means I can utilize every anti-social behaviour that gets me banned from other servers". That's hilarious you think that, but there's a reason that can't *work*. No one wants to be your bitch, and they'll stop playing. That's WHY they're banned from other servers. It doesn't matter what you call it, no one wants to sit around and be your prey for fun. [/quote'] I find it funny you immediately assume that I'm some asshole griefer who regularly kills for fun. You don't have to sit around and get shot, will you listen to your words? You've countered not one point of my argument, by your logic anyone who plays must either stand in spawn idle and get shot or be the one doing the spawn shooting. Leave the thread if you've got no good point to make. This psychotic idea that surviving = shooting everything that moves, is evidence enough you're a greifer. Here is my point, and it's the only one relevant to this game, or ANY other game that has had to deal with the same thing: No one wants to be easy prey, repeatedly, for someone else who is much better geared. In every single game that's ever had benefits to levelling, this problem has to be dealt with. You seem to think because this is a "survival" game, everyone just has to suck it up and get their ass kicked. That's great you think that. But it's not going to happen. People are just going to stop playing. You obviously don't understand human beings if you can't realize this is the inevitable result of your activity, and with no change in the structure of the mod. It's the same reason that PK'ers have to be kicked from Arma. Sure, in real life there is some random friendly fire, even psychotic mass murder. But it's ABNORMAL, no one wants to play the culled sheep to a mad man constantly. That's ridiculous anyone would want to, and it's why every game has to deal with anti-social "survival" or "this is what reality should be like", nutjobs in every game. In real life there's never been a zombie apocalypse. All that stuff would get much, much more common if there ever is one, I can guarantee you. Also, please, good gear is an advantage, but not one that can't be outdone by keeping a cool head, growing a pair, and shooting back. Stop acting like you're helpless, because you're not. I killed someone with a pimped out setup who was shooting at me because I was able to line up a shot and kill him with a single bullet from my Lee-Enfield that I found in a shed about 3 minutes after I spawned. (Butterfingers, my character, managed to lose all that lewt when he slipped and broke his neck by falling off of a ladder on a hospital roof.)

Really, if all the intentional misdirection were stopped: the above would read: The whole Zombie theme needs to be turned WAY down and/or dropped completely (does ARMA 2 feature a rabbit theme because rabbits roam its countryside?). The theme and colors should be standard green camo, with say the logo being a criss-crossed pair of rifles, backdrop to a skull. The titling font should be redone into standard military cut-out font or maybe a variation thereof to indicate para/post-military forces. What's going on at the moment is nothing short of repackaging PR, doing up some artwork in a space theme, calling it "Space Wars", then when the thousands of space-sim fans come pouring in wanting to know where the space simulation part of the game is, you tell them that it's all an experiment and that they're fighting a battle. On Earth. And Earth is in space. Best summary yet. Except it's so much worse than a death match for those who aren't initiated yet. The second I realized what it was I stopped playing. I'm not being the collector for these assholes to get gear. Let them figure it out when those of us who wanted PvP to be just a PART of the game as opposed to the whole thing are all gone. Which will NOT be long. I can't imagine people blowing more than 20 or so hours with this rinse repeat ganking till they say fuck it. You should be alert and aware of your surroundings and play the game the way you'd play it if you were actually out there if you want to avoid getting mercilessly ganked over and over again. For military equipment, learn the good spots away from towns and airfields where it spawns. This is a societal breakdown with a shitload of guns sim, PVP is going to be a major component of the gameplay like it or not. My advice is to find trustworthy friends to play the game with if you can't handle being a loner until you find a good group to run with. Whatever you do, anyone who's not either you or your tribe/clan/group/whatever should be treated with a large degree of distrust. Don't hesitate to shoot them if you have to, either. Remember, there are wolves and there are lambs. You should avoid the former if you want to retain any chance of working with strangers (this game is still best played in groups like Legion or with IRL/OOG friends or people you've known for a while) and you should avoid the latter lest you fall prey to the former.

Where most games are designed to succeed' date=' most experiments fail. I just hope you get enough results to start making a proper game... before you run out of lab rats ;) There is no real or brutal consequence to deathmatching all day in this game. Until one is introduced, your experimental design is flawed (unless the experiment is to see how many deathmatchers/griefers you can attract, in which case that experiment has been done countless times before, do your literature review!) I bet so too, but they'd be the nutjobs few and far between and certainly not on every corner block, you might want to review your population sampling strategy, it isn't representative at all (unless, as above, you're sampling griefers). Essentially (if the mod is to continue as you describe) you've made any other ARMA deathmatch mod, except with zombies in place of rabbits and loot in place of ammo crates. As far as I can see, the game is continuing to grow daily. Every time I log in there are more and more and more servers, and they're all full to the brim. People like the evolution of the game enough that instead of surviving, it's prospering. The Days Ahead Youtube series garnered about 10,000 views in several days. There are plenty of real and brutal consequences to a player's actions. Haven't you ever been shot at before? You throw around the term deathmatching too lightly. Instead of full respawns with all of your gear, as is usual in a deathmatch, you're left with a very basic kit in a tight spot if you're stupid or unlucky enough to get killed. Depending on how long you've been playing and what you have on you, death can be either a simple annoyance or a devastating, soul-crushing loss. The latter is NOT the kind of gameplay found in brainless deathmatching, which mostly occurs in this mod between noobies who have just spawned in at the beach and decide to start shooting at each other with pistols. (I've seen the term deathmatch get thrown around so much that I'm thoroughly sick of hearing, reading, or encountering it in any form and likely will remain so for the next two weeks or somewhere thereabouts. There's far, far, FAR more diversity in what people have done in this mod than would be found in a deathmatch where the only goal is to kill everybody else. Please, it's not a relevant comparison and should not be used ever in rational debate.) If you get killed, instead of screaming "COD NOOBIES RUIN MY GAEM WAAAAAH" and running off to a corner to cry consider that: 1. People most likely don't want to wind up playing an ArmA 2 version of Left 4 Dead with this mod once they read about it on the website. 2. Arma 2 is NOT the kind of game that attracts 13 year olds who have one hand in their pants and another on the mouse so they can shoot people. Even if they convince Mommy to buy it for them, they probably won't stick around long (I shouldn't have to explain why. Also, forget one of them figuring out how to install the mod). The vast majority of l33t$n1p3r$ who shoot people for the sake of shooting them fall into that demographic, which statistically probably doesn't even qualify for minority status in this game. The profile of those who shoot others is probably closer to the paranoid guy who (rightfully) distrusts Joe Blow on the internet and anything he says and wants to protect his stuff that he worked to get or, alternately, the person who is interested in grabbing what the other guy has because it's convenient and also has the former benefit mixed in. As I've mentioned previously, there are many different ways to play this game. Different people have different personalities and will play the game different ways. I think saying that the game demographics are poor, innocent survivors vs. the masturbating mob of acne is vastly oversimplifying things. Consider what I said just now about how people with different personalities will approach things different ways. You say that people will always work together to survive in catastrophic situations. I generally agree, but the actions of the groups they form will differ greatly depending on the nature, scope, and severity of the situation. If a tornado rips through a town in Kansas, the community will most likely come together and work to rebuild. However, a tornado and a zombie apocalypse (especially one that takes place in a recent warzone with plenty of military hardware just lying around) are not comparable scenarios. While humanity has fortunately not been involved in a worldwide apocalyptic event yet, there are plenty of examples in history where there have been localized or regional disasters of sufficient intensity that we can reasonably sample behavior from those and apply what we find to a larger scenario. Remember, people can and have reacted to serious life or death situations in ways that they never, ever would have in any other situation. These types of environments can change people and how they behave in very fundamental and radical ways. Take Hurricane Katrina, for instance. There was a wave of looting and chaos in the aftermath of what transpired. On several occasions, armed bands of gunmen were spotted roaming the streets and gunfire was reported in parts of the city in the news. This is a direct copy/paste from a contemporary news article when a civilian asked a POLICE OFFICER for help: "But Debbie Durso, a tourist from Michigan, said when she asked a police officer for assistance, he replied: "Go to hell. It's every man for himself."" Then there's James Gourlie. He was a Kiwi police officer, one of the six police officers out of two hundred (!) officers in his district force who remained in the city after the hurricane passed to try and preserve order. From the news article containing the quote: "A fellow officer was killed after warning looters away from a store. A looter pushed a gun against his head and pulled the trigger." Officer Gourlie had the following to say: "It was heartbreaking to see this police officer lying on his back, blood pouring out of his head....I would expect something like this in a war zone in the Middle East. You'd be stupid not to be afraid. It's how you face it that counts." While Katrina is probably the most relevant example, there are other examples of widespread chaos after less serious events (like the New York Blackout in 1977). That's in real life. Now, you take people on the internet and put them into a game environment like the one we have now and it shouldn't be a surprise that people are getting killed all over the place. Still, human life in this mod is not entirely without worth because of the hours of work people put into the game in order to get what they have. That's probably one of the primary reasons for people being suspicious and shooting the other guy before he gets the chance to do the same to you. Of course, there's also the problem where someone with good gear teams up with someone who has mediocre or poor gear. In that scenario it's a very foolish thing to do because the most likely outcome in my view is that unless you know the person IRL or outside of the game your colleagues will probably shoot you and take what you have. There will always be tension in groups like that, even where the people involved have gear that is roughly on par with everybody else's, unless all of your good luck comes in pairs (or threes, or fours, or fives....) T. Penn, you keep complaining that this isn't a survival sim but a deathmatch sim. You people keep saying that in crises, the defining factor of humanity is that we pull together and help each other survive. There's just one problem with that analogy. The comparisons that have been drawn thus far are from real-life, small-scale natural disasters. Let me emphasize something. This mod is not about getting lost in the woods and having to survive in the wilderness for a week. It's not about having a tornado demolish your neighborhood. It's not about getting hit by an earthquake. It's about dealing with being stuck in a corner of the globe that has has been overrun by zombies and is awash in weapons following a war. It's you and dozens of other internet denizens out there who will each handle things differently and in their own way. There are going to be the peaceful groups of reasonable, civic-minded people who manage to coexist and only want to help each other survive, and then there are going to be the raiding parties of roughnecks and bandits who use the copious amount of weapons left in the aftermath of the war to take what they need or what they want from others by force. The mistake that the former group usually makes is that they project their goals onto everybody else and in doing so put themselves in a vulnerable position, which almost invariably will result in them getting screwed sooner or later. Then they come whine on the forums. Obviously, this group has the better odds of surviving longer. The downside is that bandits just love to attack these groups of people and they will almost always be on the defensive in such a scenario. The latter group will always exist because many people at their core in these types of situations are mistrusting and greedy individuals, plus, many will opt for the easy way of obtaining good equipment by taking 30 seconds to shoot the players that have it instead of searching through towns for potentially hours to find the same stuff. The downside is that if it's done repeatedly they will eventually become known to the community at large and that will hamper their chances of long-term survival. I think once they add roaming zombies that are away from towns people are going to have to think a little bit more carefully when shooting others, since the basic reasoning for shooting someone if you've been alive longer than 30 minutes is self-preservation and self-benefit. As things stand (this is coming from someone who's been the aggressor twice and the defender four times) if you're coming up on a town with people in it, you're at an advantage because the people inside, if they want to return fire, will either draw a zombie horde or will have to sprint out of town first while under fire (and possibly being chased by a zombie horde). If the shooter is more at risk of attracting flanking zombies, then the playing field is a bit more even. In closing, wait for the devs to flesh out the game a little bit more and at least get it into a beta before we start arguing, guys. Rocket has already said that they'll be adding a bit more consequence to shooting people than we already have, and, if we're lucky, it will be enough to satisfy both parties to a reasonable degree. Wait and see, my friends, and in the mean time, adapt to the game as it stands now.

You misunderstand me, sir. I advocate exactly what you're describing, but I think it's rather difficult to find quality people who you know you can trust without interacting with others for prolonged periods of time. The complete loners who avoid all contact with others will die sooner than they would otherwise if they were part of such a group. Once you find such a group it's best to avoid social contact with other players outside your group whenever possible, and, if you're forced to trade, it helps to treat the people you're trading with as mentally unstable felons who could snap at any time.

By roleplay I mean interacting with others not playing it like any other fps (and no, that doesn't mean making friends with everyone). Also a skin is much more artificial than actually feeling yourself becoming crazy but well. The Bandit skin has his face covered, an interesting thing to see would be mask, or balaclava to cover one's face, hiding your name in the process, if you want to play bandit, you have to make sure no one know who you were if you leave a survivor behind. But it would also make you a target, but volontarily, not because the game decided. The intelligent people who last more than a few hours in this game are the ones who understand that your best chances of staying alive for long periods of time are to interact with others. The bandit skin marks you as a dangerous person and a potentially unstable ally. Everything you want is already here, but the balaclava option would be interesting to have.