I have a story to tell.

[Cavan 0]

Today I followed 3 people near Zelenogorsk for several minutes. They eventually went into a barn and I decided that I should take the risk and attempt a 3 vs 1 ambush. They accidentally aggro zombies and hold up at one of the entrances as more come rushing. I circle around and gun down the single sentry covering that door with an AK at point blank. I then engaged in a hilarious broken legged rolling fight with the remaining two.

2 magazines of ak ammo and 11.5k health later I crawled victorious with..not a lot of loot to call my own, one had an m16, one a winchester and the last disconnected and had his body despawn before I could loot it(he had camo clothing and I'm guessing more valuable gear).

What happened next is what was unusual, I was basically stuck in the barn with 500 hp. I was at least not bleeding and I had fixed up my legs, but I passed out whenever I tried to move. I hear a tentative voice over the direct chat, he tells me that he doesn't have very good English and wants to know if I am friendly, I tell him I am and proceed to explain my proximity to two corpses by saying that i'm waiting in this barn for my friend to come back. I lied that a bandit had ambushed and killed him and I had killed him in a fire fight as revenge for my poor friend.

He uses one of my looted blood packs (still dripping from the murders) on me and i'm good as new.

Me and my friend had some fun, I showed him the nearby supermarket and let him pick up a bag and an m1911 before he says he has to disconnect.

I wished him luck and let my new friend pass unmolested. I never even asked his name :( (did very much contemplate shooting him in the face, but my friends over mumble who are bandits themselves said it'd be too much of a dick move, and I agreed)

I'm not sure whether this is a thread against trusting 'friendly' or if direct voice chat is awesome.

Have you ever been helped by an innocent person after murdering people for no reason less than a minute previously?

[Charu 0]

This is just proof that sometimes, direct communication can make someone hesitant to shoot.

I'm no bandit, but hey I should share a story too of my ultimate demise of this one guy that had very good charisma. So there I was in Cherno, was a new character so it was one of those "you didn't care" what happened moments and whatnot. I'm just going to the usual spots, looting anything and everything I can, until I came to the firehouse.

Granted, I knew this was a hot spot, so I did a full sweep of the area before I began my ascent to see if there was anything good. As I went up, to my unfortunate dismay, there was no loot to be had. That was until I heard someone below me. Me just starting out with a Makarov, me being the friendly person raised up my direct coms and hailed the person below me. The person responded back saying he meant no harm at all. Alright, cool, or so I thought anyways.

So he comes up the stairs, we stare at each other, give each other the salute, and I promptly tell him that nothing was in the firehouse. He then pauses for the moment and goes on to say we should go to the apartments. I agreed since I was going to head there myself after this firehouse detour. So we cross the streets of Cherno, until he suddenly goes full sprint and angers all the zombies in the immediate area. Me being naive thought he must've double tapped the run key on accident. So no biggy, I follow him to the apartments as we anger more zombies.

Now we're in the apartment that's by the north hospital, and we take shelter there. So I'm distracted with the zombies and shoot at. Until... this guy's dark side comes to fruitition. As I'm shooting at the zombies, he promptly turns around and unloads a clip to my head. I go down dead, and that's... that. I wasn't even angry either, was sort of surprised and then laughed.

To whoever that person was, I do not know. It was on a Hardcore/Veteran server with no 3rd or crosshairs. I do know to whoever it was. Well played, you talked in Direct coms convincing me you weren't going to do what you did.

THAT... is true banditry. Even though I'm a victim, I loved how he pulled it off sounding so convincing in direct coms.

[SilentKilla78 0]

I have indeed been helped by a friendly after a bit of lying. Once, I spawned in Electro Powerstation at the top, and I heard flies and someone moving below. I asked "Friendly?" numerous times, to no avail. I figured it'd be a good time to try out my new M1014, so I promptly killed the man and took his shit. A couple minutes later, another guy was coming, I asked friendly and he replied yes. He asked why there were dead bodies down there, I said I was travelling with my friend and a bandit ambushed us. Thankfully, he believed me. We then continued to travel throughout Electro, looting, protecting ourselves and having fun for the next 2 hours :)

I guess I'm like a neutral character? I will kill people, but I often feel bad afterwards, and I love teaming up with people.