A Range Of Behavior

[Saethkept 134]

So I have been spending large amounts of time across several DayZ maps, and enjoying the heck out of the game in many of it's forms. When player behavior in DayZ is mentioned, it seems the panacea answer is "Well, It's DayZ"

and I am quite fine with all that implies. I roll with both the good and bad behaviors evinced by other players I meet in game, and I adapt accordingly. An incident last night I experienced however, is worthy of mention and discussion.

I was playing Taviana on a private server last night, alone out of the forty-nine other available slots. So a dude logs in, we'll call him B. B immediately begins to chat my virtual ear off, of course asking me where I was and did I have a vehicle and could we meet up and what gun did I have--all the usual, normally highly annoying questions one might be subjected to during any given play session.

I am over in Krasno--having found a vehicle, crossed the bridge and scouted the airfield for a heli and other items. B spawned in new to the server in good old Stare Pole. So I explain my extreme distance from him (B is new to Taviana) and tell him that yes, if he finds a vehicle or hoofs it, I will meet him on the bridge. He then goes on about having a learning disability and apologizes for his spelling, etc. in side chat.

TIme passes, B finds a vehicle, we meet on the bridge and he is all about the etiquette of dropping or stowing his weapon in his backpack to prove he is friendly. I repeatedly tell him I do not care; secretly I had decided to shoot him in the leg if he proved a bandit at heart. So we meet, he gets in my Humvee and we head out. I show him some of the map on the way to Martin to pick up some better weapons. In a firehouse south of Martin, B aggros a ton of zombies and gets trapped inside. They break his leg and I kill a dozen or so of them with the 1866 lever action.

I instruct B to crawl to our car (we do not have morphine) which he does. We head to the barracks outside of Martin. I park well outside the walls and crawl in, In the barracks I find morphine for him and crawl back out to the car. B comes driving inside the base and aggros all the bloody zeds. There's another car inside and he suddenly wants it. So I give him the morphine, he fixes his leg and rolls out in the other vehicle. After that, he would no longer talk to me in sidechat, or at all.

So I gear up (find a DMR), and then continue driving north. I pass B a few Km north, pulled to the side of the road, just sitting there. I figure maybe he has gone suddenly hostile and decide to keep going on. Server restart message comes up, so I park in the woods and log.

I come back half an hour later, and the side chat is on fire with hate between B, his apparent friend with whom he is now playing with, and some other player. Seems B had set up an ambush on the bridge connecting the islands and is killing whoever tries to cross and looting their corpses. The dispute between B and his victims goes on and on, and I get some insight into his "true self" I suppose you could say. Seems B is actually a long time bandit, and loves to player kill with his buddy, with whom he was on skype.

Long story short, this B guy played friendly with me for over an hour. During that time I had my back turned to him many times, and also had much better gear than him, a better vehicle, lots of food, etc, and yet he did not try to betray me. Then suddenly B comes out as bandit to other players on the server. What a fractured psyche this fellow must possess. Either that or, he is only "Bandit Brave" when in the company of a friend. Strange DayZ indeed.

[Zombie Jesus 723]

My buddies are unrepentant bandits when playing while I can actually be friendly in the right situations. So if I am solo and a player helps me or is being friendly I tend to not engage in banditry (well I never kill people who help me or offer a ride, I stick to my word in game), but if my buddies are on I often take the shoot first mentality that they display. It is not that I am only bandit brave when buddies are around, it just happens that I already have a team and since they are going to shoot you anyways I might as well get in on the action. Also having a buddy on the game tends to remove some of the extreme boredom that sets in with solo DayZ play so I am no longer in the mood to take risks that will cause me to take a long journey back to my buddies.

[intensity (DayZ) 312]

He did explain he had learning difficulties. Back here that's just a nice way of describing people who get sectioned.

Some time ago I read a post by some guy who had 5 or so different accounts (names) which he would use according to his mood. But one doesn't really need to go through with such a charade. While people follow me sometimes I think "are they really friendly"? And they think "Will I have enough time to pull out a gun from his backpack if he stops"?

[krihelion 175]

Sometimes ill play friendly, most of the time its because i have been seen and the odds arent good of me landing an instant kill shot.

But sometimes, I am friendly, usually only to one person who I never kill again, and protect with my life. It is a game, you can do what you want.

Instead of posting here, I would of just went and shot them both in the head, then thank them for their location.

[DemonGroover 8836]

I think you hit the nail on the head when you said he only becomes Mr Bad Ass Bandit when in the company of his friends. A true definition of a bully and a coward perhaps?

Could he have shot you? He probably thought about it but wimped out because he was on his own.

TBH, nowadays i tend to travel solo only allowing fleeting moments where i meet other random friendlies (to bloodbag, give rides etc). I met a guy on a server the other night and even though he was friendly i just got the feeling he was eyeing my M107 the whole time. First chance i got i vanished into the trees.

[blunt_zephyr 51]

I bet if you didn't act the pro you are, he would've shot you for not taking precaution.

It seems, more&more, 'these days' griefing/trolling/ass-hat actions are becomming everyones mainstay. Instead of creating their own entertainment, they'll glee from denying you, yours. Shameful since the only reason (I could think of) is that this the webz and not 'irl' Your actions rarely come back to 'haunt you' or need reasoning.

[Cap'n (DayZ) 1827]

I am a friendly player at heart, but I won't hesitate to kill someone. I've robbed backpacks while people were looting, but killing was different for me. I knew how someone felt when hours of hard work is lost for a guy to run up, yell "FRIENDLY!", then blow your head clean off with a Lee Enfield. I'd rather kill bandits and zombies than innocent players.

[Never 237]

Well he could always have just been bored waiting for his friend and without his buddies peer pressure he thought he'd have a go at playing a style he doesn't normally get to do with his friends and most random players?

Everyone has their own preferred playstyle, doesn't mean that you wouldn't occasionally switch that style if your in a different mood or environment. Common sense if you think about it.

Also its a matter of content/'endgame', for a lot of players, once you have the kit of half decent gun, meds + vehicle in that mindset you've 'WON' at DayZ, (NB: I'm talking about a common mindset, not my own.) after that point they revert to DeathMatch and Griefing mode.

Also common in this mindset combined with the lack of endgame: Why bother searching the map for food when you can park a car in the middle of a road and murder anyone that goes within 20 metres of it? If in real life they are going to sit on their ass waiting for some guy to deliver them pizzas why would these people not play DayZ the same and wait for some poor fucker to bring them some beans and something to shoot?

DayZ has mutated, its not hard to get comfortably geared and due to that bored these days. plus you mess up and pull a horde or get shot by another player that wants to try out their new hand cannon (let face it you don't really need a gun for the zeds, so what else are they there for? haha) they can just die and respawn.

DayZ was hardcore, but the community got hold of it and broke it.

[Roac 19]

One of the reasons this may be is because it is so easy to kill, which of course, people would take the easier route than scavenging for supplies. Now, this example has been used tens of thousands of times, but why in Minecraft do active communities (towns) develop, when in DayZ people only go solo, or (most of the time) know the person they are working with some how? What makes them so different?

To be honest, I have no idea what makes them so different, they are both open world survival games. Same concept, grow, accumulate, and prosper. But what would you do in DayZ once you have the best equipment, tents full of ammo, food, and drink?

-That is the wall right there, that is End Game. And there is no desire to create a group of followers, create a stable base, and watch your community expand throughout the server (That is the End Game in Multiplayer Minecraft.)

Even medics, while are extremely helpful, do not actively pursue to create a group of medics, to expand their enterprise. (I dunno, a hospital perhaps?)

Now this is just the Majority, there is the minority who wishes (Also i believe this is what Rocket wishes as well) to create a stable government (Perhaps not the best word?) seat in the middle of hell, to bring order to the chaos, most of which are eaten alive by Bandits. Then it turns into a vicious cycle.

Edited January 30, 2013 by Roac

[Auslovich 48]

Everyone has their own preferred playstyle, doesn't mean that you wouldn't occasionally switch that style if your in a different mood or environment. Common sense if you think about it.

This.

Sometimes I feel like being a bandit, and killing people, and sometimes I don't.

Totally determined by how the player acts, and what equipment they have on them. Also, if I need something I may kill someone for it.

(By what equipment they have on them, I mean if they have better gear, and I am have an advantage, or it looks like I can take them, I will.)

If they help me out, or help out others in sidechat, if I talk to them in direct and they sound cool can influence my decision.

Edited January 30, 2013 by Auslovich

[Saethkept 134]

Thank you all for the great responses. I agree that everyone has their own preferred playstyle, I just had to shake my head at this experience. I am a careful player who sometimes ignores all chat and goes solo. Other play sessions. I will meet up with anyone and give them a chance; I suppose that is my idea of "endgame" -- teaming up with others. I suppose it is down to personal choice however, I tend to respect the fact that even though DayZ is just a PC game, players do spend hours working on their characters and so for me killing another for no reason or randomly, is the same as stealing their time. Obviously, in an Unreal Tournament type game killing other players is the objective, and everyone does it because there is nothing else to do -- that's the primary game mechanic. I will chalk it up I suppose to personality differences and leave it at that.

[Tabris07 159]

I change my playstyle up all the time. I can be the friendliest guy around, but if I happen to feel like it, I have no problem KoSing people. Sometimes I just want that rush. I think sticking to one style is boring.

Don't get me wrong though, I wouldn't betray another friendly player that I had met up with. That's a little bogus. I stick to killing the strangers.

[Conkykillz 791]

That is where the beauty of PVP servers i go and vent on there, you and everyone else on that server are there for one reason and that is to KOS

[DoomsdayClock 34]

Yeah like everyone else said, everyone's got different playing styles. And everyone likes to try something different out from time to time. I'm usually a friendly, but every so often I just get sick of being stabbed in the back so I switch to a "KoS" method of play. No reason why someone who plays more as a bandit wouldn't want to see what it's like to partner up with a stranger every so often.

But then it could have been a whole host of reasons. It sounds like you were considerably better geared, perhaps he was too timid that he wouldn't have been able to get a kill shot on you. Would've been a bit risky. Plus, he said he was new to Taviana. Perhaps he wanted a guide for a little bit to give him some advice on the locations and show him around the joint first.

Who knows though, really? DayZ brings out some strange behaviour in people.

[Michaelvoodoo25 3120]

It is very rare I KOS, I am more of a friendly player who wil go out of their way to help and aid other players in a tough spot.

I have played on many servers with low player counts and find them to be better for team based play, You can just jump on chat and meet up and go raiding easier than if the server was full.

On servers where full or high in players, the total opposite, trying to be a freindly player on these servers is nigh on impossible. Bullets everywhere. Map's with more players on are paranoid places. Depending on what style I want to play (Usually taxi / medic) I can cater via server player numbers.

there is also the concept of strength in numbers, clearly players team up for back up and social aspects, I have found more Bandits in all my DayZ playing time in teams than I have alone. I rarely met a bandit who was not with company. the correlation of bandit and also negative behaviour coward (As op described his mate B ) is apparent to me. If I see teams of 2 or more I duck and cover untill they pass. (Side note: I can usually tell bandits also by them not chatting in side, Servers which tell you who killed who always have the names of the guys who don't chat)

Strength in numbers is akin to a company of weak people!

Edited January 30, 2013 by Michaelvoodoo25

[Saethkept 134]

Adversely--to my own OP--last night I joined a new Chernarus server, I am always looking for a better one to play on or my favorites vanish, and met two great players with whom I chatted at length. One was a long time vet of said server and the other was new to it like myself. The vet offered me a ride in his Military Offroad as we happened to be in the same northern town. Unfortunately, while he was sincerely friendly, he accidentally ran me over and broke my leg.

Whilst I was bleeding out, the poor guy was trying to fend off zombies from my injured cyber self but their were well over a hundred of them so I told him to save himself as he must have had a several week life on his character. He stayed and protected me while down, gave me morphine and first aid, and drove me out of town. Ultimately the zombies charged us and killed me anyway, but the effort the veteran player made to help me out was commendable.

[Roac 19]

Adversely--to my own OP--last night I joined a new Chernarus server, I am always looking for a better one to play on or my favorites vanish, and met two great players with whom I chatted at length. One was a long time vet of said server and the other was new to it like myself. The vet offered me a ride in his Military Offroad as we happened to be in the same northern town. Unfortunately, while he was sincerely friendly, he accidentally ran me over and broke my leg.

Whilst I was bleeding out, the poor guy was trying to fend off zombies from my injured cyber self but their were well over a hundred of them so I told him to save himself as he must have had a several week life on his character. He stayed and protected me while down, gave me morphine and first aid, and drove me out of town. Ultimately the zombies charged us and killed me anyway, but the effort the veteran player made to help me out was commendable.

Damn, what a moment!

[squarebox 7]

Due to the fact that most player I met these days KOS, I tend to live in the woods away from major cities(living the bear grylls' way). I'll only help a player(bloodbag and etc) who I've monitored(on side chat) over a few days to determine whether they are friendly or bandit. Normally, I spend most of my time looking for and destroying mega/bandits bases(basically doing my part to control overpowered players which often turn bandit). If i do find a vehicle, I would render a taxi service and eventually giving the vehicle away.

[Josh225 129]

I simply stopped being a KoS bandit because after the months of playing shoot every player you see it becomes a very boring playstyle.

I find being friendly is a much more interesting way to go about it. And if I have to be a bandit it's definately much more fun to attempt robbery rather than shootig people.

[Inception. 9443]

I've saved people. I've killed people.

It really does depend upon my mood.