Lawlmonster

Lesson learned, I hope. People in this community and throughout the internet, indeed our entire lives, are keen to prey on those without thick skin. My only suggestion would be to choose what you say or post publicly very specifically, and try to ignore the bullshit. Good luck.

Since I've only been playing with one other person, tents have been a great way of giving us some feeling of permanence and territory on the server we play. I can understand how people involved with constant clan warfare, or purposefully duping, would hinder the original intent, but some of us aren't storing two of each military grade weapon in multiple locations around multiple servers. If everyone's so worried about removing the thirty to sixty minutes it takes to fully equip a new character, why not just make tent and vehicle inventories smaller, and why does any of this even matter until the duping problems are absolved (which they won't be, not until some fashion of standalone)? Tent and vehicle storage gives me something to achieve, and has given my pal and I some interesting new objectives when playing. Of course, we don't shoot everything as soon as it enters our cross hairs either, so if people are having difficulty adjusting or finding something to do, maybe they could use a little creativity and approach the game differently?

I think it's odd the assumption that killing other players is the only thing to do in a game with almost limitless possibilities. Personally, I enjoy creating camp sites, finding and restoring vehicles, or helping people. The reason I fell in love with this game to begin with is derived from my enjoyment of post apocalyptic or zombie fiction, and the emergent story telling that comes from sacrifice, teaching people how to survive and lending a helping hand, has always proved more interesting to me than shooting mindlessly at anything that moves. Some of the talk about murder counts being all that really matters in this game is pretty troublesome, especially since it tends to come from the anonymous online aggressors which usually pride themselves on playing hardcore, or surviving a cut above, when the truth is that playing friendly is far more challenging and rewarding. If you're going to die and lose your shit anyway, why not take the chance of trusting someone? Nothing in this game is particularly difficult to acquire, so what's the problem?

It's a decision that everyone has to make. I wrote in another thread that personal morality does not cease to exist in virtual environments, despite anonymity: they are your actions, regardless of existence in a physical space. That being said, playing friendly comes with a certain sacrifice. You're probably going to die frequently. The exchange you get for reduced survival is knowing that you're doing the right thing, whether or not you want to believe the choice matters in an online medium. Personally, knowing that this is a game and that my character will die does not encourage me to murder everyone I see for survival or entertainments sake, but rather prompts me to be even more docile. If our characters are going to die, which they all will at some point, what does the frequency of occurrence matter? You might as well try to make a few friends, rather than shoot everyone who isn't in your ventrilo, teamspeak, or skype channel. If your character ceases to exist in exchange for an attempt at friendly interaction, who fucking cares? You can restart and do it all over again, or stoop to the level of KOS.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: the extension of our personal morality does not cease to exist in a virtual medium. Attempting to extrapolate cruel or otherwise unfriendly actions by placing blame upon a character, escapism or boredom, claiming that you would certainly never say or do some of the things which you are capable of in an anonymous environment, particularly not amongst the physical world, is avoiding the issue for comforts sake.

Despite the mechanics of the game, what you may gain or lose from any interaction with another player, you're still making a moral choice, regardless of the virtual medium, when engaging others. Personally, I find the emergent stories created through the sessions I play where I help and protect to be more rewarding.