Some ideas for banditry and more.

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There's a lot of talk about DayZ (and Arma2) being as realistic as possible. Although I admire the efforts of BI to create such a game (A2), the complete translation of that approach shouldn't be applied to a Zombie apocalypse game, for a number of reasons:

1. There's zombies.

2. The game will and has attracted a slightly different crowd to that of the pure military sim of Arma 2.

3. The game will never be able to give a truly authentic representation of of zombie apocalypse due to it's inherent restrictions of being a game.

4. It IS a game (and therefore should have mechanics to make it enjoyable and fun - THIS DOES NOT MEAN MAKING IT EASY).

5. The behaviour engendered in any game will never truly reflect real life because you have the opportunity to restart (the weight and moral decision of taking a virtual life as opposed to taking a real life one).

The first and foremost thing that this leads me to is banditry and some ideas of handling it in game. All game mechanics are built around a risk/reward scenario, the higher the risk the higher the gain. This is both emergent and structured in DayZ. Structered by certain areas having more zombies, but higher grade loot (military camps). Emergent by new players searching for loot in the cities and being picked off by snipers, or more organised survivor groups in the north being harrassed by bandit/raider groups. This should never change, only get refined. But I'd like and I think this is the direction Rocket is taking it, in that new features should be authentic, but not realistic at the cost of gameplay.

First off, I love the idea of the heartbeat proximity alarm of detecting low humanity bandits right now. I have yet to experience that, but it's a very nice method of not overtly giving away how wary to be of someone. I think Rocket has suggested a splash of blood on the face, or a tremor in the character model even to give some minor visual alerts. Great! So the more experienced survivors get to slowly become accustomed to the tellers of bandits. Akin to films like The Book of Eli (tremors in cannibals) and 28 Days Later (the behavious and social appearance of the soldiers). But I believe there should be some effect on the bandit themselves, not to ruin the game but only to give a more authentic feel to the heavy decision of taking a life. For instance the heartbeat detection is all good, but when a bandit/s are hidden waiting to snipe thier prey, this has now risk effect on them.

So here's some ideas:

- Sweaty palms, irregular breathing. When a bandit aims at a survivor with high humanity, maybe thier gun could waver a little more, their breathing become audible?

- Modification of the humanity scoring system, a lot of people get annoyed about shooting someone shooting them only to lose humanity in self defence. A first shot protocol could be introduced, where if you shoot at or within 2m of a survivor, then your humanity is lowered a small amount immediately and you become a freefire target for a certain amount of time (not huge as it is nice to put warning shots near lone players to get them to scare them off without killing).

- Ability to drop guns and weapons quickly and raise hands above your head, one of the best videos we've all seen was the stick up video right near the beginning of DayZ public alpha. Perhaps (and it's a big maybe) if Bandits knew they could hold players up without having to kill them, then we might see some really fun and exciting situations emerge. I guess a more obvious and less armed salute?

- Someone on a forum I post on (rllmuk) suggested an insanity scale related to humanity, which is a good idea. The more lives you take the greater the mental weight, the greater the chance of missing the shot, of the screen having some effects. Perhaps at the peak, you could start making zombies appear as survivors so the bandits don't know who to shoot. But I'd also like to suggest that with constant PK'ing, maybe you come out the other side, become desensitized to all the murders, vision clears, aim steadies from previous effects. But at this point, you face is covered in blood and heartbeats are very audible? Maybe even have the bandit murmuring to themselves to reflect some part of them is broken psychologically?

I certainly don't want to stop people killing players if that's how they choose to survive, but I'd like to add some gameplay mechanics around it, so it too has a defined and emergent risk/reward system. Saying that more powerful and more attentive zombies will help.

Couple of other more general suggestions:

- Considering the backlash from certain more vocal elements of the community to 1.7.1, perhaps selecting a numbers of server to trial new patches with a separate central db? There are many of us able to give reasoned and focussed feedback which I worry gets swamped in the more extreme views of the forum? And it would lessen the requirement (and uproar) when hotfixes are needed or new features or refinements required. I'd be happy on either side of the fence, testing the new stuff and feeding back, or playing with a more stable version for longer in public!

- If a player is ill and they die of whatever cause, can we have some kind of count down initiated to turn that ex-survivor into a zombie? I think it would an interesting twist on the looting of corpses if you're never sure of a survivors health. Perhaps hiding/burying the body stops this from happening?

- Stamina/out of breath status. We all do cross country running right? You have to pace yourself if you going to do the whole thing without stopping. If you're sprinting full pace (ie: away from a threat) then you're going to need to take a breather. This introduces and reinforces the idea of breaking line of sight and shelter even more important.

- Melee, I know this is a overly done suggestion, but a melee system tied to a stamina system could work. Don't know if the engine could handle such a system. But at least the ability to push a zombie over, giving you the opportunity to break line of sight and sneak away. Has become increasingly noticable void with the lack of starter weapon.

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Oh also, I was wondering if we could introduce headset required servers?

One of the things I love about this game is the social aspect. But so much can happen in the time it takes to write, are you a friendly in the barn?

Perhaps if some servers disabled all global chat channel, and DC had different levels of range (shout=40m, talk=20m, whisper=3m) then it would encourage more social interaction in game rather than either mumble/teamspeak groups (thus isolating more people from other groups) or typing (time differential).

Dunno if that would work or not. Especially as I seem to have trouble with my 360 controller headset being picked up in arma2!

[edonovan 15]

I don't think it should be easy to identify bandits, because it gives you a false sense of security. This person could still commit a crime of opportunity, even if they aren't a bandit (yet).

I do agree, though, that self defense should not be considered murder.

My approach is usually a peace offering. Tell them a location of one of my stashes. We may not travel with each other, but at least we can still work together.

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I agree that identifying Bandits shouldn't be easy, but I do think there should certain hard to gauge tellers like the heartbeat now, you have to be in a certain range. And the first time murderers is what the 'sweaty palms' suggestion is kinda for.

I like the stash idea, but with an average life expectancy of 33 minutes, can be hard for people to build a stash to start with?