Xeva

Very poetically done, fine sir. However, you miss one major concept. It doesn't matter whether or not you kill an unarmed person to prevent them from getting at your "resources". In reality all you're doing is wasting that guy's time. All he has to do is click a couple buttons to respawn and bam, he's at it taking your shit again. Banditry is the simple art of killing somebody for enjoyment or his gear. Nothing more (for most people). At least in my eyes killing somebody to prevent their "prosperity" and having fun at the game is pretty sociopathic. Also, I can pretty much guarantee that if there was a zombie apocalypse in real life with DayZ being the model, most people, after having figured out they're immune, would just pick up assault rifles and kill zombies all day. They wouldn't kill each other, no. Why? Because killing somebody who's immune to a virus that's killed most of the population of the world is like launching your nuclear arsenal at Russia just for shits and giggles. You're basically just killing yourself and your community for no real purpose.

It's a very real concern but I think there's a pretty simple way around that. If you remove a car part you don't get exp for replacing it for the next 15 or 30 minutes. Simple as that (even though I'm no coder so I have no idea what this entails). Well if people find my original idea too radical I guess I can always fall back on this :P I'll just always spawn as a bag lady.

That's a good idea. At some point once I get enough suggestions like this I'll update the OP to include them all. Another great idea with the books. Adds a way for people who like being ghosts to progress, albeit rather slowly. As for weapon operation, that could definitely be a skill. I think I already mentioned having expert in a random skill on spawn, but maybe I didn't clarify that enough.

I don't follow. Any explanation? Does it concern big clans just teaching eachother skills and being set to go? Or respawning to get a more favorable skill? The point isn't to get people to group up for a long time. It's to get people to interact instead of just shooting when you see somebody 50m away. You only have to trust that you can do a trade and not shoot eachother for the 30 seconds you're not behind cover spying on the guy in 3rd person. If you do shoot the other guy, you don't get the skills that he may have. All you get is his damaged loot (confirmed for SA for anybody wondering). If you have a lot of skills, yes. You may get jumpy and shoot on sight. However, the damaged loot you get may not be as valuable as the pristine DMR you get from the guy after giving him the ability to repair a helicopter. This really makes trading a real factor in gameplay.

Yet you decide to reply to it why...? Well, I guess the least I could do is thank you for the bump. Even though I'm really just bumping my own thread with another useless response... Fuck me right?

Introduction Just to get started, this isn't a thread dedicated to nerfing the ever-loving balls off banditry. This is simply a suggestion to make the value of human life greater and for bandits to think twice about shooting that random survivor running down the street. Note: Similar things have been beaten to death already. This, I think, is different. Or maybe I'm just a noob at the search function. The Suggestion Currently the only thing worth anything is gear. Everybody can do anything given they have what they need to do it. This includes everything from giving somebody a blood bag to fixing a helicopter one bullet away from showering everybody nearby with shrapnel. While the jack-of-all-trades thing is very convenient, with it no single person is better than another aside from gunplay. Hence the conversion of such a large part of this community to banditry. I'm not suggesting any kind of leveling up system. Instead, I believe for life to have value everybody must be unique. If everybody was as intelligent as Einstein, Einstein wouldn't be worth much would he? There are many important things that must be done to survive in DayZ. Currently, as mentioned before, everybody can do all of this with ease. In real life this is not the case. I sure as hell don't know how to repair a car, let alone a helicopter. If I tried to give somebody a blood bag I'd probably end up accidentally stabbing them in the jugular. For this reason different survivors should start out with different knowledge, be especially skilled in a particular practice, and be able to teach others the basics of that practice. This provides a necessity for player interaction. Before you go down to the comments and start raging over not being able to put on a bandage immediately, these skills don't necessarily apply to basic things like that. For example, you can loot a supermarket for food but you don't really know how to carve up a boar for its meat. You can apply a bandage but you don't know how to make a disinfectant for your wound. However, people who do know and are experts at this can teach you how to do it. To further elaborate on this idea, the skills could all have a system in which you progressively get better at it through practice. For example, say you start out with knowing how to gut animals for meat steaks. However, another survivor needs a blood bag. You currently don't have the ability to administer a blood bag. The survivor does know, and quickly teaches you how to do it. Your are now a novice at administering blood bags. After bagging the survivor, you have 10% progress towards being adept at administering blood bags. For clarity, here's the "levels" of skills: Untrained: 0% success rate Novice: 60% success rate Adept: 90% success rate Expert: 100% success rate, able to train others to novice. (numbers debatable) Once you train all your skills to being Adept or Expert, congratulations! You are now an ordinary survivor who doesn't need to make interactions with players anymore. Welcome back to your old style of play. Except now getting here is much harder, and not dying is more of a priority than ever. When a group of bandits takes you hostage, you're gonna wanna shout through direct that you're that jack-of-all-trades, right? Conclusion What really makes me enthusiastic about these skills is that it opens up so many possibilities for trade, deception, and making friends. Perhaps somebody has a DMR and another guy has the ability to fix a helicopter. They could make a trade out of that, or possibly even decide they like each other and team up. On the other hand, somebody might say they have an ability, get the other to come out of hiding, then shoot him for his gear. It's technically shooting on sight, but not before some interaction has made its way in there. It's a situation in which both sides have an equal opportunity to change the outcome. If the guy suspects it's a trap, he can try to save his own life by running for fighting. It's not a deathmatch. Combined with the damaging of items when you shoot somebody for gear, the motivation to let somebody live to see what he has to offer is pretty astounding, at least in my opinion. Side Notes This topic is highly debatable. I encourage discussion and discourage unintelligent ranting. If you don't like it, say why not. I want to hear your opinions. Despite my apparent fascination with this specific idea, I'm open to many suggestions and am willing to tailor this to you guys' input. Which skills are automatically known and which skills you can learn is debatable. I haven't really thought about it for lack of input from the community at the time of writing this thread. Also, what skills actually exist is currently a mystery (Until the SA drops we can't be sure of everything the devs have put in). As such, I've only mentioned blood bags and repairing vehicles as an example. I realize it's highly likely this type of thing has probably been beaten to death but I have yet to see much actual discussion going on about it. However, should the community speak, so shall this thread enter the great beyond, never returning from the mystical land that is the graveyard. Tl;dr Skills you can learn from somebody to encourage player interaction.

Yes. Except the idiot part.

Why waste time playing DayZ? Why not go have a life doing something that doesn't involve video games? The reason people would "waste time" doing this is the same reason people "waste time" sniping survivors in the major cites. The latter is obviously the easier route, but this is an alternative for those dedicated to helping others. Also, I've never been shot and killed anywhere outside of a town or city. Some people know how to conceal themselves in bushes and such. Once I lost a guy tailing me by using a forest to my advantage.

There's always the option to hoof it. This requires a true hero's dedication, however.

Classic way to being a hero. This is just another way that I find more...heroic.

While the hero skin is all fine and dandy, I don't really feel like I've accomplished anything by blood bagging a few people in Cherno and Elektro. In my opinion, this is the true way to be the type of player that brings joy to this game. STEP 1: THE HUMBLE BEGINNINGS a. Find a bicycle, boat, or hoof it. If bicycle, go to step 2A. If boat, go to step 2B. If on foot, either will work. STEP 2A: THE PATH OF GLORY a. Plot a course you will take. You will be looking for bandit camps. b. Keep in mind that a single tent can mean more spread out in the area. Search that general area for more tents and vehicles. STEP 2B: HONOR TO THE SKIES (Note this method is less likely to work effectively) a. With your boat or horrible swimming skills, travel out to Skalisty Island. b. If nothing is there on your current server, hop until you find one that has a bandit camp or helicopter (NOTE: A helicopter that is in need of repair most likely signals the server is NEW. Go ahead and take the chopper, but this process requires a server that has camps, which a new one most likely will not.) c. After taking the helicopter, initiate a search for bandit camps from the air. d. If no helicopter is found, either resort to step 2A or if you found a camp, go on to step 3. STEP 3: THE HERO'S TEST a. After finding a camp, search all of the tents. You may take anything you want except snipers for personal use. b. Load up a vehicle (if applicable) with things you want. MAKE SURE IT IS NOT A URAL. If the camp has a ural, go to c. If not, go to d. c. Remember the sniper rifles you couldn't get? Load them all except one into the ural. Shoot the ural's engine block until it explodes. Hide your current sniper rifle under a bush or tree so it despawns upon server restart. d. If no ural, hide the sniper rifles all under trees or do the same process with other smaller vehicle(s). While the vehicles are not the targets of this process, you may use them as sniper exterminators or if you find the ammo, to put them back up at their spawns for survivors to fix up after a restart. STEP 4: THE SAVIOR IS BORN a. (optional) Go to Elektro or Cherno with your newly acquired gear. Check the area for snipers. If there are any, stealthily approach and kill them. Hide the bodies. b. Travel along the coast and hand out your gear to fresh spawns. If you want, you may tell them the location of the camp. c. Repeat the process, or bask in the glory of being a true hero. This process is by no means comprehensive. You may go to any lengths to help new survivors, as long as it does not involve any grief from any said survivors. Motivation to do this? First of all, you're a hero. Second, you probably just got rid of a lot of duped items. Third, you most likely saved the lives of about 100 fresh spawns from being killed by those sniper rifles. Have fun!

While the west and north edges of the map are great, camps CAN be found in the middle of the map, as well as near Cherno and Elektro.

The M4 is a solid weapon that's very mainstream among end-game players. The ammo is relatively easy to come by if you frequent military sites. I prefer the M4 only because it's much better at taking on players. The MP5 is a peashooter in that respect.

If the server is low populated, go and find an animal on the airfield or on the plains surrounding. If you have the necessary supplies to eat their meat, that's a great way to get back in the game.

You can shoot vehicle tires, however I've noticed it being a little bit buggy. I was shooting the tires out from a ural I found after having looted it, and I quickly found myself spraying trying to damage them. For some reason my shots weren't all registering.