Vigilance

You should always be wary of strangers whatever skin they wear. Bandit skin doesn't prove someone is a murderer if they kill in self defense. Your argument to just shoot strangers practically guarantees you will look like a murderer as you put it, and be shot in kind. One solution is to display usernames on familiar characters according to how long you hang around them. Being branded when you kill a player is magical and unrealistic. Either you witnessed a murder or you didn't.

I would not mind a respawn system that incorporated a shop. Something to reward players based on time played. A running credit balance to buy supplies before starting a new character that carries over with the user. That said, the prices ought to be steep and the supplies basic... Assuming standalone DayZ, a respawn shop could also have exclusive clothing items to redeem credits for.

It's not a bad idea if a killed player was able to inherit half of their items at random upon respawn, with the other half being left on the body. It is obviously unrealistic, but so is having a team of bandits resupplying their friends when they come back from the dead with a new character. In fact they come back with extra supplies as well, so...

Some people have suggested that a player's characters memory should reset after they die, but I'm opposed to this idea for several reasons: A player who chooses to be a bandit working with other bandits often returns to their group after death, often gaining back their items and carrying over an affiliation that is unrealistic in RP terms. They are still the same person. They may have a new character, but the player is still the same one who considered PK a viable survival strategy. Bandit groups will repeat this cycle to a non-RP gaming advantage. Death happens in DayZ a lot. A good bandit will not expose their identity, but in the case that they do this system will bring some balance to bear against those who use strength of numbers to dominate the game and ignore strict RP principles.

As the game currently stands, to facilitate realism and curb the constant PVP it might be beneficial to reduce ammunition drops or make larger ammo caches a rare occurrence. Sniper rifle ammunition ought to be a premium anyways, right? In a standalone DayZ it would be worth considering a drop rate in correspondence to the number of days past the initial infection outbreak date. Such dynamic gameplay would requre the forethought of planning the game around it, and letting server ops choose whether to run the game in progressive flow or locking the world spawns to an x date. The general theory here is more zeds and more resources earlier in the outbreak period. Human NPC's would also add some flavor, and provide good zombie bait for initial outbreak scenario. :)

Lock boxes were suggested recently. Interesting ideas in need of more logistic detail. Toolkit was the suggested means of breaking locks in one other thread.

Facebook? Hell no. There are better solutions in this suggestion forum. Try reading more. zedsdeadbaby and I stumbled upon some similar useful ideas.

After clearing a town, there ought to be periodic events where herds of zombies try to move in through the city, spawned from outside the settlement.

Take a look at my familiarity player identification post. It has what you're looking for. Memory of other players to grow over time based on proximity and visibility. Higher familiarity meaning username displays at greater distances. And memory fade over time is considered as well. While tagging is useful, the primary issue is a non-morality based means of identifying players given skins can only do so much, so simulating memory seems the solution. The base idea can be done in the current DayZ I believe.

"The wild west" is a myth. There were vastly more murders in large cities (east coast) per capita. Most of the violence of the North American frontier was provoked by government directly, or at the behest of corporate interests (read land grabs and displacing native populations, thus provoking native retaliations, not that there wasn't native on native violence prior to expansion of European immigration.). There was plenty of peaceful interaction between most settlers and natives on account of the economics of violence discouraging destructive actions in favor of lasting economic prosperity. I agree, bandits are a problem to the existing gameplay mechanic, however this suggestion is yet another morality system. See my Familiarity Player identification thread for a possible solution based on username display tethered to time*proximity/visibility to other players. http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/47325-familiarity-player-identification-bandittrade-solution/

Good idea, and nice that it has an in-game mechanic to it. Question.. How many different key combinations? Comment..Looks like DayZ would get much expanded playability as this idea adds world persistent "Easter egg hunting". Suggestion.. Toolkit lock picking/breaking success probability should be much lower. The attempt doesn't break/damage the box, does it? A player with the luxury of time should have multiple opportunities to open the box, so how would a 2% probability rate be?

Bandit skin would be great, but not tied to an artificial morality system that cannot distinguish self defense from murder. It ought to be another regular skin option/discoverable. Want a solution for player identification? Here is my idea: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/47325-familiarity-player-identification-bandittrade-solution/

Making them recognizable is important, but cannot be done with skins alone (so many more bandits than skin options). My simple suggestion, which I posted, was to have player usernames appear over time in proximity with other players, to simulate familiarity with another players face/person. So if you see a player without a username you should take realistic precaution whether or not they are friendly. Part of my suggestion also includes that the longer you spend time with someone, the greater the distance can be for the username to appear. This would solve the huge hurdle of promoting trade and identifying friendlies to prevent accidental/friendly player kills. I also suggested an optional system of user-end player flagging after another player becomes familiar. The flags would be group, friendly, default/unknown, and hostile. Naturally, it would be easier to become familiar with a person not hiding in cover, and easier in daylight vs night. This idea requires no new skins ( but that would be great) and relies on simple timers/counters to function. Bandits can still be bandits. No more automatically tagging people as bandits for self defense. A more realistic ID system without the morality nonsense. http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/47325-familiarity-player-identification-bandittrade-solution/

After thinking about ZedsDeadBaby's post, I think it would be acceptable to add another flagging option. Group Friendly Unknown/Default Hostile But I'm not completely sure about color coding usernames yet. I would appreciate more feedback on the technical details such as timing or distance. Should it be slower/faster? I imagine eventually this system would be converted into different sized ticks for distance/visibility to fill up a familiarity +1 counter. Can this sort of feature be limited to player field of view cone? If so then shorter timing could be justified.

As long as you don't get mandatorily prompted to classify people then the idea has legs. Nothing would be worse than a bunch of popup menus appearing when an organized group of bandits assail you. My solution was 3 flags: friendly, default, and foe, all of which are optional and secondary to a basic 'familiarity' system based on proximity over time... but it might help to have an additional flag for inner circle/survival group. Whatever the case, keep it simple.