Dynamic system of bandit recognition [#2 - rewritten and refined]

[GodOfGrain 191]

Thanks everyone for the discussion and your replies in my previous thread.

(http://dayzmod.com/f...it-recognition/)

I had some spare time and rewrote my idea to make it more accessible.

I have taken the freedom to make a 2nd thread about this, as this might be a possible solution

in the future to approach the bandit / survivor topic.

TL;DR:

This system of dynamic bandit recognition serves three purposes:

- Allowing "friendlies" to distinguish between peaceful survivors and bandits

- Facilitating friendly interaction between players, as every survivor is now a potential source of information

- Achieving this in a semi-realistic, believeable way

Bandits are not punished in any artificial way. But as they are "outside of the society",

they would lack information about other players. Further more they can be identified as murderers

if the other player "has heard about them". (/ no real changes to bandit gameplay)

QQQ

It would be great if someone with some database skills could give an estimation if

this system is possible. It requires lot of data storage.

QQQ

Introduction:

The system of dynamic bandit recognition.

The current system of bandit recognition is ... hmm quite a lot, but certainly not good.

I guess we all know the discussions about it. To cite rocket from my memory:

"The current bandit skin system is not what DayZ deserves"

Why do we have bandit skins right now?

Why have they been reintroduced?

They are necessary for DayZ gameplay. Bandits shall not be punished, all right, got that.

But we want a game where both play styles are viable. There are no bandits without survivors.

Survivors need to know theirkind.

They need some information to judge who might be trustworthy.

In the standalone you might be able to identify specific players by their clothing.

Great future when running around in a group, but this doesn't help in this case.

(Even if you restrict yourself to a single server, the player base is just to huge / possibility of skin change)

The Aims of this system:

- This system tries to overcome the known issues of the bandit skin and underlying mechanic.

- It further introduces a solid reason to take the risk and meet an unkown person. (To gain information)

- Achieving this in a semi-realistic way

- Without arbitratily punishing the bandit-playstyle.

The core idea:

Instead of the previous simple mechanic (you kill 3 people = bandit skin)

we put in something more complex.

Information about others would be player-specific.

Player A knows something about Player B.

This information is allowed to spread dynamically throughout the DayZ player base.

Information is spread by communication: Two people or a group could sit together and share their information.

Practically speaking there would be a context menue allowing to "invite to join fireplace / take a drink".

Recognition points

The transmitted information would be the so called "recognition points".

They range from 0-500

0 = no negative information about this player

100 = I know this is a criminal

> 100 = "Storage for negative points up to a maximum of 500"

No witness - No crime

If a murder takes place and noone is around, no information is stored.

Information is stored IF:

A wounded player survives

OR a 3th player is in the vicinity and observes the crime

[A group-future would be necessary, otherwise your group members would identifiy you as a murder]

The victim / observer have to be close to the attacker (during or minutes after the shot has been fired).

For gameplay reasons I'd say about 40-60 metres max distance.

An example

A player (A) gets hurt in CQ by someone and survives. As he has seen his attacker himself he would gain ~ 80 recognition points.

The next time he meets him the game would provide him an indication that this player is very dangerous.

After some time the player meets a couple of friends (C and D).

The 80 recognition points [RP] have been reduced by 10% by then, as his attacker has played for 8 hours since the incident

--> 72 RP

The systems will reduce the amount of RP transmitted by a suitable percentage (as it is only a verbal description of the attacker).

Therefore his two friends (C and D) would gain an RP value of 65 about player B.

If they hear from player B again, this would add up to this RP.

RP always reduce with the time the attacker has played since then.

The indicator:

I'd imagine something like the heartbeat system to be useful.

For gameplay reasons it should work at quite a large range. 60 meters?

Summary:

Some weeks and months after this systems has been introduced there would be huge amounts of information transmitted every time

players exchange information. An active DayZ player would have informations about thousands of players -

concentrated around those servers / regions / timezones he is used to play.

An active player who uses the opportunity to exchange himself with other survivors would

receive a relatively accurate assessment whether another player is dangerous or not.

He still would need to get relatively close. And often he would have no information, so he will

always be in the unknown about the true history of the other.

This system is complex, hell yes.

Perhaps one IT guy will come by and tell me: "Hey dude, absoluetly not possible from a technical perspective".

If it could be done, would it be worth the effort?

Possibly yes.

First of all it is a system which allows to differentiate between friendly and bandit in a relativley realistic and believable way.

It would facilitate and give reason to meet unknown people.

It would not enforce a certain playstyle; although it would reward "social" people in a realistic way.

And it could be worth the effort because other gameplay mechanics could be attached to this.

Think about all thosse medics out there. Perhaps you could give other guys "positive recognition points" as well.

[...without the possibility of abuse !?]

Then the game would provide you with the information: "I might have heard form this guy, good one"

Congratulations! You survived the wall of the text.

What do you think?

Technically possible?

Worth the effort?

Ideas what other gameplay mechanics could be attached to this system?

Edited December 14, 2012 by GodOfGrain

[raigprime 47]

As I started to read this I was opposed to it. The great thing about DayZ is anybody can do anything anytime and you never know. But when I realized that you were proposing a "recognition system" that would allow players to at least "recognize/remember" that someone had been friendly or violent towards them in the past you completely turned me around.

There's no way in these games that use graphical assets, to genuinely make your character unique enough to be recognized as "you" time and time again. But with your proposal, each individual would have a memory (that has a graphical representation), of the type of activity someone applied to them, be it positive or negative. No one else would necessarily see the person the same way.

THIS is a genuinely GREAT concept for developers to run with.

[Dreygar (DayZ) 178]

Still no.

[Dreygar (DayZ) 178]

As I started to read this I was opposed to it. The great thing about DayZ is anybody can do anything anytime and you never know. But when I realized that you were proposing a "recognition system" that would allow players to at least "recognize/remember" that someone had been friendly or violent towards them in the past you completely turned me around.

There's no way in these games that use graphical assets, to genuinely make your character unique enough to be recognized as "you" time and time again. But with your proposal, each individual would have a memory (that has a graphical representation), of the type of activity someone applied to them, be it positive or negative. No one else would necessarily see the person the same way.

THIS is a genuinely GREAT concept for developers to run with.

The standalone will have customizable clothing and not the same ole generic character clone as everyone else. This is still a horrible suggestion.

[DiazWaffleCrabstro 39]

sigh...this shit again ok here goes...again

considering the whole idea of death = you start a clean slate.

And the recognition system is pretty easy already(you litelarry see names from hundreds of meters sometimes)

and this implementation could possibly flag both players as "bandits"

and as a last nail to the coffin. It would need insane amounts of of server resources to track all individual players correlations to other players.

Topic is like digging a deephole, to escape the restraints by restraining and punishing yourself/everyone more.

[hoik 415]

The standalone will have customizable clothing and not the same ole generic character clone as everyone else. This is still a horrible suggestion.

This is a horrible reply :P .

To quote SeeJayPee

There's no way in these games that use graphical assets, to genuinely make your character unique enough to be recognized as "you" time and time again.

THIS is a genuinely GREAT concept for developers to run with.

Like I said in the other thread - this idea has alot going for it, not the least turning "knowledge" into a kind of currency that is intrinsicly linked to the players current life.

Edited December 15, 2012 by Hoik

[DayZoey 110]

Honestly I'm on the fence about this one...

I'm against it because it forces me to interact with players I don't know in order to convey/receive information about other players which could easily be used to set up an ambush and be abused (as the bait of the trap would be completely innocent of the crime) to sucker people like me or new folks in to dying again. It would also make people that I interacted with think I'm a bandit because I shoot people that are hostile towards me or that have the chance of seeing me and/or killing me.

I'm sort of for it also because it does help bring players together and help players like me shed our attitude of Kill on Sight because you don't know them and make talking to other players more useful, though I think potential bandits should be seen as more dangerous as you interact with them because people who murder other people tend to be traumatized if they were the least bit sane before they did, if not they have quite a few verbal/bodily cues that something isn't quite clicking upstairs.

The introduction of a morality before character creation would be pretty good actually, something that is optional at first but as you murder more and more people, your morality is more or less forced to one of a less sane person to start as you keep playing/dying because clearly you're not interested in being a good person. You were dangerous to society before the apocalypse started and now you're running amok with no rules. I think sitting down with people and talking to them (via user interface like you suggested) would be helpful if it helped you determine what kind of person they are.

Example being...

David comes across three survivors over the span of a game. One named Sasha, one named Michael and the third named Evan. When he spoke with Sasha over the time he spent he got "Sasha looks troubled, perhaps even guilty of something and has trouble meeting your eye when she speaks. A bit quiet but with possibly good intent" while the time he spent with Michael he got "Michael seems eerily cheerful in light of everything happening, with a song in his heart and a skip in his step. You notice something a bit strange in his eyes, the way he looks at you from time to time is a bit disturbing..." whilst spending time with Michael he got "Evan speaks steadily and with the occasional smile though he seems a bit troubled, the way he seems a bit on edge does seem normal though keeping an eye out and possibly ready to help at a moment's notice with his friendly gaze".

Sasha would be a survivor like me, someone who kills people when she has to but doesn't enjoy it and seems guilty over doing it. Someone who started with good morality and means well but is becoming the very monster she attempts to survive against in such a hostile environment. Evan is one who has either started with good or bad morality but has shaped up to be more of a paragon of the apocalypse, helping others and only killing when he had to in order to survive. Someone who you could depend on not putting a bullet in the back of your skull the second he got the chance. Michael, obviously from his description is someone who has started with bad morality over many lives of decreasing that morality by continuously killing his way around simply because he couldn't survive any other way or because he found joy in doing so, a true sociopath that anyone could shoot without too guilty a conscience or loss to their own morality.

The kicker being that you as a player wouldn't be able to see how you behave when inspected/talked to by other players, unless you had a friend telling you what you were like when you were spoken to but maybe over time with enough inspections your friend wouldn't really "notice it" getting more of a regular text when interacting with them so people couldn't just abuse the morality system to dupe other players.

A bit overtly complex I know but there really is no easy way of introducing morality to a game of any sort.

[colekern 1364]

I think we should stay away from systems like this. Its not a bad idea, in fact I'd say it's a pretty good one. But I'd like to see players keeping track of this. Not the game.

If customization of characters gets pretty good good in standalone, then it would be up to the players to describe and remember enemies. It would be so much more... dynamic. When there's room for human error and mistakes, things could be more interesting. Imagine a case of mistaken identity! Imagine what kind of confrontation would break out!

If that doesn't work however, I could definitely see room for experimentation with this.

Overall, good idea, but it might not be completely alright for DayZ.

[GodOfGrain 191]

1. considering the whole idea of death = you start a clean slate.

2. And the recognition system is pretty easy already(you litelarry see names from hundreds of meters sometimes)

3. and this implementation could possibly flag both players as "bandits"

4. and as a last nail to the coffin. It would need insane amounts of of server resources to track all individual players correlations to other players.

1. This system could work in both ways: You loose all information once your character dies, or not.

2. You are playing on servern with name tags? ( :D )

3. And why exactly should it flag both players as bandits?

By the way, the current system is notorious for marking players as bandits who acted in self-defense.

4. Possibly true. Still waiting for an estimation of someone who has proper knowledge in this area

If customization of characters gets pretty good good in standalone, then it would be up to the players to describe and remember enemies. It would be so much more... dynamic. When there's room for human error and mistakes, things could be more interesting. Imagine a case of mistaken identity! Imagine what kind of confrontation would break out!

This is a good feature, but does not help in any way to differentiate bandits and survivors.

Edited December 15, 2012 by GodOfGrain

[DragoKnight 5]

I love this suggestion. I would love to see this in Day Z So when you get to know someone it should put a note or something in a notebook saying "This person acts a nervous around others". Also you should be able to tell how people are yourself like after an event you find another survivor, one of your friends wants to help, the other wants just to continue and the last one wants to kill him/her. You should be able to add your own notes to people in the notebook so it would add extra realism.

[Heiduk 265]

I think there need to be better ways to identify players you've previously encountered, but I'm not sure the proposed system would be very effective.

How often do hostile encounters end with players on both sides still alive?

How often are hostile encounters witnessed at close range (60 m) by neutral third-parties that live to report on the events?

At least in my experience the answers are almost never and never.

I'm also not a big fan of the heart beat indicator. Cross-hairs are off so do I need to aim my weapon at a potential friendly to see if I'm afraid of them? That's a pretty good way to start a fire-fight.

[Dreygar (DayZ) 178]

This is a good feature, but does not help in any way to differentiate bandits and survivors.

That's the point. You shouldn't have a game mechanic telling you a person is bad.

[harley001 315]

Ehhhhhhh what? Trust me i tried to read that but do us all a favor. When you make a suggestion. GET TO THE POINT! You kept talking about nonsense that had nothing to do with what you are trying to say. Also. I think humanity works fine, there is no need for anything else. Once dayz works properly in standalone I think it will be fine. Also people won't shoot on sight less. People kos because they want to not because they have to.

This system reminds me of darksouls. Some players in that game got quite the reputation. But I feel it would break the game if I see a player and little note pops up saying "this guy kos". Also that takes the fun out of meeting new people.

Edited December 16, 2012 by harley001

[hoik 415]

That's the point. You shouldn't have a game mechanic telling you a person is bad.

I completely agree. But I think this type of "memory" system could avoid this by only indicating if a person has been hostile towards you - without putting any label on the player (so you are not assuming their intentions). If info could then be shared and corelated about a single player, then maybe you could make a informed decision on who this player is.

For me the need for long term information gathering is where this idea comes a bit unstuck - because not only are memories lost on death, so is that players "personality". So any info gathered on them will become redundant. How can a database be built on something that is constantly changing?

EDIT:

Just a thought, but if there were enough variaty in clothing/ custom faces to enable players to simply identify eachother on sight, then through the incarnate nature of death in DayZ, players would actually be able to unathentically retain knowledge about players they have met previous lives...

Edited December 16, 2012 by Hoik

[Happymrsnowman 52]

Still no.

So glad you take the time to respond to a thought out post with an equally thought out responce.

[Tooka (DayZ) 7]

I think your idea is unnecessary. Dean Hall said that he wants to make zombies more of a threat in Standalone. This will promote grouping rather than just killing every player you see because you will probably need help fighting zombies. Also, a variety of clothing will be in Standalone so it will be easier to identify players. I think these two factors will result in far less banditry if done right.

Edited December 16, 2012 by Tooka

[Faggala 29]

Sexy idea +1

[GodOfGrain 191]

That's the point. You shouldn't have a game mechanic telling you a person is bad.

As I understand DayZ both the survivor and the bandit playsytle should be viable.

To facilitate social interaction a survivor needs the possibility to judge an unkown player.

Otherwise the strategy KOS will remain the most efficient option.

Currently we have a very simple system... 2,3 kills, irrespective of the circumstances, and you are marked as bandit for everyone.

The way you are marked (headscarf) is strange as well.

This wouldn't happen with the proposed system.

Yes, the news about a single kill might spread a bit around the player base...

but 99% of the other player would have no information about this.

On the other hand, if you PvP all day all year, information about your behaviour will be well-known.

Most friendlies who have talked to some people will perceive you as a bandit.

And I think that is quite realistic, simulating that people are talking about your appearance... in which area you are around ...

Edited December 16, 2012 by GodOfGrain

[GodOfGrain 191]

I completely agree. But I think this type of "memory" system could avoid this by only indicating if a person has been hostile towards you - without putting any label on the player (so you are not assuming their intentions). If info could then be shared and corelated about a single player, then maybe you could make a informed decision on who this player is.

For me the need for long term information gathering is where this idea comes a bit unstuck - because not only are memories lost on death, so is that players "personality". So any info gathered on them will become redundant. How can a database be built on something that is constantly changing?

What you point out is true: This system does only work if information about others remains valid beyond their death.

That's how it works right now as well. For me it would be acceptable.

Beyond that there are two possiblities:

Player's retain their accumulated information about others when they respawn;

or it is lost. I think both ways are possible.

Losing information on death is good for immersion, but as a consequence the time information

is stored would need to be longer. Otherwise there would be insufficient amounts of information floating around.

I personally would prefer that you keep your information beyond your death.

Then recognition points about other players can be reduced quicker over time.

This would allow to change a playstyle from bandit to survivor more easily.

[DiazWaffleCrabstro 39]

1. This system could work in both ways: You loose all information once your character dies, or not.

2. You are playing on servern with name tags? ( :D )

3. And why exactly should it flag both players as bandits?

By the way, the current system is notorious for marking players as bandits who acted in self-defense.

4. Possibly true. Still waiting for an estimation of someone who has proper knowledge in this area

This is a good feature, but does not help in any way to differentiate bandits and survivors.

considering #1. how would it be a clean slate if you get labeled as a bandit even after death, getting insta raped over and over. thanx but no, and the proposed system would not fix the problem of labeling people who defend themselves as bandits problem, if anything, encourages further slaughter of them, since, consider this, what happens when others interact with said bandit, in whos books, the innocent is labeled hostile. have fun with that then.

[DemonGroover 8836]

I am actually opposed to any tracking of banditry. In so far as the game tracks it.

I think that Players should have one username only. Too bad if you make a spelling mistake, but one name means one reputation. If you are a bandit, eventually you will be known as a bandit.

Thats my suggestion.

Regards

DemonGrover............oh shit!!

[harley001 315]

I am actually opposed to any tracking of banditry. In so far as the game tracks it.

I think that Players should have one username only. Too bad if you make a spelling mistake, but one name means one reputation. If you are a bandit, eventually you will be known as a bandit.

Thats my suggestion.

Regards

DemonGrover............oh shit!!

What if someone has my name and is slandering my good reputation as a hero?

[DemonGroover 8836]

Everyone will have a different name. So you as harley001 will be unique.

So you can go after that goody two shoes harley002 and blow him away.

Edited December 17, 2012 by DemonGroover

[UprightLion 0]

I think that Players should have one username only. Too bad if you make a spelling mistake, but one name means one reputation. If you are a bandit, eventually you will be known as a bandit.

When you are killed in the game, isn't it often true you'll have no way of ever finding out who killed you, or why? Of course this is consistent with realism. We can got shot at in real life without ever learning who did it or what their motives were. However it does seem to complicate the idea of having players simply remember each other's reputation for banditry.

[GodOfGrain 191]

There are 1,000,000 DayZ Player. How could you recognize someone through their name / specific clothing?