BubbaWilkins

The reason the skin change was important was that it added a tangible penalty for being an asshole. Call it karma, reputation, word of mouth, whatever. Like the old west, everyone had heard of Billy the Kid, Jesse James, etc. To take it a step farther, many were known by signature style of dress (boots, hats, belts, guns, etc) so even if you had not met them, you might recognize who the were. I for one would take it a step further and add a third skin that would require you to keep your humanity and kill bandits. Call it a ranger or a lawman and give them an overcoat and a star or something. As it is, removing the one tangible penalty is just going to result in less cooperation between people who don't know each other. Some will still take the highroad, but far more are going to just kill on sight since they won't be marked for death. If anything, it is less realistic now since everyone will look like a clone of eachother.

You either care how something effects your fellow man (player) or you don't. Everything else is emergent behavior resulting from that simple truth. Granted, being a bandit in game doesn't mean you're psychotic, but it does mean you can be an asshole. Makes you no different than the asshole at the beach that likes to go kicking sandcastles that others have built. Nobody likes that guy.

If what Mojo says is true on the Hive interactions, then they need to display some sort of indication of where you are in the list with the Hive server. Last night I connected to the Australian server twice and was in game briefly until my ping went over the threshold and I got booted. The second time was right after a server reset to refresh their connection with the Hive. Every Chicago, Dallas, and "US" server I had tried in the hour before and after resulted in nothing but a black screen with "waiting for server" which I would tolerate from anywhere from 30secs to 5 minutes. I never got into any of those games even when my ping was often 30ms or less. I might be a bit more patient tonight after seeing this thread, but I'm skeptical that waiting it out is going result in any more game time. I've also noticed this seems to be more of an issue of your dead.