Vigilance

Preface: ARMA as a simulator for military combat is subsequently oriented towards the representation of two or more large bodies of men, mostly homogenous in visual appearance to satisfy the interest of identifying friend from foe when focusing on large military operations. DayZ is an individualistic survival mod. This causes a problem in that players lack an effective means of identifying friendlies from hostiles when players are visually or logically indistinguishable from one another. The more obvious but limited solution is more skins... Barring a more detailed outfit customization setup (limited to what ARMA can provide), more skins would be welcome to increase diversity for visual identification. While a few more fatigue colors would be good, more civilian/hunter/survivalist outfits would definitely enhance the realism. But to truly get over the visual limits of player customization the game should have a means of simulating the human capacity for recognizing faces/persons. Here is one such suggestion which doesn't fall into the morality trap of automatically tagging players as bandits and friendlies, but does offer players a means to tag "known" players after they can be visually identified. The idea: Incorporate an in-game/in-game RP player identification system to simulate recognition of familiar users, and a completely optional user-end means of flagging known users as friendly, unknown/neutral(default), or hostile. The system would set, according to distance and lighting/visibility conditions, the rate at which another player becomes memorable to the observer, activating username display after meeting certain conditions. Higher familiarity would speed up recognition or make recognition possible at greater distances. Usernames would not be automatically visible in close proximity but instead appear according to player familiarity and environmental factors. Proximity is a factor. If you know a player very well they should ID at greater distances. Night time should reduce this, with ID of players slower to confirm when shrouded in darkness. Studies have shown that facial recognition degrades from a distance of 13 meters and beyond, peaking at 46 meters. The visual acuity in recognizing a face at 1.6 meters distance is 8x that of 13 meters. Implementing a familiarity system requires approximating this, and good judgment for the time factor. Here is a rough draft of how the system could function... At max player visibility, +1 familiarity to that player for every 4 minutes @ 1 meter proximity. Multiply time as distance increases. Multiply time as players are more hidden. Time of day to limit maximum distance that this feature functions within, normal maximum distance being 40 meters. Username display true @ 5 meters per 1 familiarity, max 60 meters leaving, 45 meters approaching (trigger). Display distance, persistence, and speed of display limited at night or when player is less visible optional. For example, you and a friend are investigating a building at nigh time. Your friend leaves your sight and moves out of ID distance, when your friend returns you won't see their name until they are within your familiarity threshold, and only then if lighting/visibility is sufficient based on your friends visibility/posture. Also, if the friend appears through a doorway, a short delay could be added before the username ID appears. Can ARMA handle line-of-sight username toggling?? Any player you are familiar with will now be flaggable at your discretion. Over time players will become forgettable, -1 Familiarity every 24 hours, minimum 1 familiarity, never below. This system would replace the way usernames are currently handled. Conclusion: This will allow sneaky 'bandits' to be rewarded for sneaky banditry and let players recognize familiars/friendlies at a greater distance, remaining cautious against anyone they don't know and realistically cautious until they can verify via approach. It should allow trade and other social infrastructure to manifest according to player desires without having to overhaul the game with complex artificial social features. This will help Day Z establish an unbiased infrastructure for player reputation and make username display more conditionally appropriate. No more arbitrary factioning or being branded a bandit for self defense. I suspect this is very easy to implement as it is based on timers and counters, and maybe a user list feature, but I defer to actual experts to correct me if I am wrong. (No need for magic notebooks. Though notebooks could be interesting on their own, or inscribing items with comments/names.)

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.

Well, the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. If no other skins are added to the game, a familiarity system can still solve the major issue of socializing in Day Z. It should also prevent a majority of accidental friendly PK incidents, and make it easier to discern hostiles who surprise you: If a player with hostile intent can get in close and you spot them at the last second, you ought to be able to tell that they are not a friend/familiar player and respond accordingly vs getting mowed down while asking if they're a companion. More realism FTW.

If hackers can hack objects, then currency is no different. The vulnerability already exists. There may be other reasons to object to "currency" (depending how it is implemented) but I'm not sure this is one of them. You already play in a world that has item spawning, which can detract from the persistence, but there is a good reason why it is done. That said, anything of utility and fungibility is de facto currency when you're playing a game like this. That's not the definition of currency, Ollox. Central enforcement is not necessary. You're attributing nuances of fiat and confusing that with currency in general. Most of the danger of trying to establish trade and community comes from the fact that it is difficult to identify players as individuals, visually and familiarily. I have an idea to solve this problem that doesn't add the morality issue of factioning into friendly vs bandit. I'll post that later. Another issue with trade is that there isn't a whole lot of society rebuilding incorporated into the game at present.