'Trust no-one' - is that really good advice?

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

Just looking to provoke a little debate on this one, having wondered about it myself, and then found a few others expressing similar sentiments in another thread.

One of the first things many people (including myself) will say to a new player looking for advice/tips is 'trust no-one'. It seems to pretty much be the community-accepted rule #1 of DayZ.

However, many of my experiences with other players have been fine. Sure, like many others, I've been shot on sight a couple of times by players who simply aren't interested in interacting with others outside their TeamSpeak (or who are aspiring/dedicated bandits), but those players I've managed to actually open some kind of a dialogue with have generally been relatively friendly (or at least not actively attempted to kill me).

I think a lot of it boils down to how you define 'trust' - many seem to be of the opinion that 'don't trust anyone' is more along the lines of 'assume everyone you meet is going to try and kill you'. Whilst obviously that varies from server to server, I think for the majority of players that's simply untrue. I've killed players as a survivor. In a couple of rare instances I've even fired the first shot, but only in situations when I feel my survival is at risk if I don't.

Personally, I see 'don't trust anyone' as more of a 'don't let your guard down around people you just met'. I've personally witnessed (well, listened to one half of it) a guy with an M16A4 try to help out a newspawn near Balota by letting him take a bandage out of his backpack. As soon as that guy turned his back, the newspawn buried a hatchet in his skull and took his gear. A harsh lesson, especially for someone who was trying to do the 'right' thing, but a valuable lesson nonetheless.

The thing is, Chernarus (or whatever your map of choice is) is an unforgiving world for a lone player, and finding an ally, even just someone to watch your back while you change backpacks in a supermarket makes your life a lot, lot easier, particularly if you're new and can pick up tips from your new buddy. To that end, I'm not sure we should be perpetuating the assumption that EVERYONE will try to kill you, but on the same note, it would be remiss of us to fail to inform new players that there are a LOT of players out there who will simply put a bullet between your eyes just on principle.

So yeah, what are people's thoughts on this?

Edited February 19, 2013 by Target Practice

[Sakka 28]

I do agree with you in most of what you said. I play as a friendly most of the time. When I join a server it's more about what adventure/problems are awaiting me. That was makes this game so fun. It's truly amazing how enjoyable your night can go when you encounter/befriend a random survivor and play the game more in their play style than my own.

[thehero 119]

Hmmm well if I can make first contact with someone I will try to diffuse the situation I won't keep my eyes off them or turn my back to them it really depends on where we are how we ran into each other if they refuse to communicate I will warn them once or twice and then kill them I have never been betrayed but I take extreme care with run ins and so far I've done pretty good. This doesn't include kos people or bandits of course I just return fire at that point

[krihelion 175]

shoot everyone and everything will be alright in the end

[aussiestig 681]

I think what the line means is 'don't turn your back on anyone'. It's alright to be friendly to other players, but don't 'trust' them, because more often than not, they turn around and kill you.

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

I think what the line means is 'don't turn your back on anyone'. It's alright to be friendly to other players, but don't 'trust' them, because more often than not, they turn around and kill you.

But will they?

Making one hell of an assumption, I'm going to assume that I'm a fairly typical survivor. I won't go out of my way to link up with people I don't know, but if we stumble across each other in the woods, I'm not going to shoot unless I'm pretty confident you're about to shoot first.

If I wanted you dead, I'd shoot you the second I laid eyes on you - I wouldn't take the chance that while I'm waiting for you to turn your back, you might get suspicious and open fire first.

I think there's also mitigating factors like what equipment someone's carrying and how tempting it might be to others. If I've got an M4CCO and Ghillie suit and bump into a guy with a Lee Enfield who wants to team up, you can be DAMN sure I won't be turning my back on him until I'm 100% confident he's not just looking to upgrade his gear from my twitching corpse. Likewise, if I'm visibly unarmed and run into a guy with an AS50 in a supermarket, I'm probably not going to be too worried - odds are, I'm simply not enough of a threat for him to worry about killing, as long as I don't get too close or try to take anything he's after.

[Pandema 352]

I trust no one. Been killed too many times after helping someone or running with them for a bit.

I don't KoS by any means, but I stay hidden and keep an eye on em.

[fathairybeast 246]

When I used to lonewolf on public servers I almost never had any issues (other than hackers). I know this is the exception to the rule but about 80% of my interactions with other players was positive. I think that there is a lot to be said about who you allow to see you, how you position yourself when you see other players, what you say, where you meet them, etc. I usually hung around low population servers in quiet areas so whenever I ran into another survivor they were usually doing the same thing as myself: just getting by, doing their own thing.

A lot of these guys blitz into cherno on a 30+ pop server (where one bad apple puts everyone in the city on guard) and then complain about getting shot when they sprint into a store looking at another player down the barrel of their gun... doesn't make sense to me. Or rather, it makes perfect sense why they end up getting killed on sight.

[hollenfeuer88 124]

I am almost always a friendly. However, I managed to find my self up at the NWAF with no map. This being annoying, I killed the first guy I saw. I got a gps out of the deal! I needed it bad enough I killed for it. Somthing I rarley find myself doing. Thats the thing about Dayz, you never know when you might find yourself as the bandit.

[Uncle Zed 272]

I've come across more friendly people willing to help than I have people that shoot on sight and I haven't killed or even shot at one single player since I started playing. If I am killed by someone with the shoot on sight mentality, I'll usually just leave the server. If I can get out of sight after being shot at, and exit the server without them knowing, it's all the better, because they are left not knowing for sure where I am and it increases their paranoia. There's absolutely no point in shooting at someone simply because you see them, especially if they are moving away from you and have some shitty weapon like a pistol or hatchet while you are standing there with military grade hardware.

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

When I used to lonewolf on public servers I almost never had any issues (other than hackers). I know this is the exception to the rule but about 80% of my interactions with other players was positive. I think that there is a lot to be said about who you allow to see you, how you position yourself when you see other players, what you say, where you meet them, etc. I usually hung around low population servers in quiet areas so whenever I ran into another survivor they were usually doing the same thing as myself: just getting by, doing their own thing.

A lot of these guys blitz into cherno on a 30+ pop server (where one bad apple puts everyone in the city on guard) and then complain about getting shot when they sprint into a store looking at another player down the barrel of their gun... doesn't make sense to me. Or rather, it makes perfect sense why they end up getting killed on sight.

Nail on head. Communication and body language are two hugely important things in establishing contact with someone you've just met - it's a lot easier to justify shooting a mute avatar charging at you and pointing a gun at your face than it is to shoot a guy who's laid down behind a tree 30 or so metres away who's telling you that he's not hostile but that he's got his gun pointed at you just in case.

[tiresomehoopla 37]

Just looking to provoke a little debate on this one, having wondered about it myself, and then found a few others expressing similar sentiments in another thread.

One of the first things many people (including myself) will say to a new player looking for advice/tips is 'trust no-one'. It seems to pretty much be the community-accepted rule #1 of DayZ.

However, many of my experiences with other players have been fine. Sure, like many others, I've been shot on sight a couple of times by players who simply aren't interested in interacting with others outside their TeamSpeak (or who are aspiring/dedicated bandits), but those players I've managed to actually open some kind of a dialogue with have generally been relatively friendly (or at least not actively attempted to kill me).

I think a lot of it boils down to how you define 'trust' - many seem to be of the opinion that 'don't trust anyone' is more along the lines of 'assume everyone you meet is going to try and kill you'. Whilst obviously that varies from server to server, I think for the majority of players that's simply untrue. I've killed players as a survivor. In a couple of rare instances I've even fired the first shot, but only in situations when I feel my survival is at risk if I don't.

Personally, I see 'don't trust anyone' as more of a 'don't let your guard down around people you just met'. I've personally witnessed (well, listened to one half of it) a guy with an M16A4 try to help out a newspawn near Balota by letting him take a bandage out of his backpack. As soon as that guy turned his back, the newspawn buried a hatchet in his skull and took his gear. A harsh lesson, especially for someone who was trying to do the 'right' thing, but a valuable lesson nonetheless.

The thing is, Chernarus (or whatever your map of choice is) is an unforgiving world for a lone player, and finding an ally, even just someone to watch your back while you change backpacks in a supermarket makes your life a lot, lot easier, particularly if you're new and can pick up tips from your new buddy. To that end, I'm not sure we should be perpetuating the assumption that EVERYONE will try to kill you, but on the same note, it would be remiss of us to fail to inform new players that there are a LOT of players out there who will simply put a bullet between your eyes just on principle.

So yeah, what are people's thoughts on this?

On namalsk I shoot on sight. I've never met any truly friendly players on that map. On every other map, i'm friendly. But one lesson i've learned is to never lower my weapon, or turn my back.

[xwhitemousex 67]

If you want to team up with someone in DayZ, then team up with them before you log into the game.

I.e. bring your IRL friends into the game, or join a gaming community or similar. Then you have friends in the game already and it saves you the never-works-out-anyways problems of trying to befriend strangers using the very limited group option and chat tools in the game.

Example... why would you want to run around with a stranger, talking on Direct Chat so everyone can hear your conversation, when you can do the same on teamspeak, ventrilo or mumble and noone but your friends / clan can hear it?

It's simply counterproductive to attempt to make friends using the direct chats and random encounters, and 9 out of 10 times it ends up with one survivor getting shot by the other.

Make friends outside game, not in the game.

You'll live longer if you do. That much has been proven over, and over and over and over and over again. There is a reason, based on the experience of hundreds if not thousands of players after interacting with eachother, why the rule "Trust noone" is the most prominent rule when it comes to surviving.

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

-snip-

Whilst I agree with a lot of what you're saying, I do think that approaching the game with that mindset removes some of the beauty of DayZ - that unpredictable 'human' element you get when you throw a living, thinking (well, most of the time, anyway), breathing person into the midst of your adventure. They'll say and do things that will utterly change the way your character progresses, and you'll experience things you've probably not come across in a game before. If you just go it alone, or go with someone who you know and work well with, you'll potentially be cutting out a huge part of the experience of what is a multiplayer game.

Make friends outside game, not in the game.

Can't even begin to tell you how much I disagree with that!

[Dreams_Of_Cheese (DayZ) 71]

If you want to team up with someone in DayZ, then team up with them before you log into the game.

I.e. bring your IRL friends into the game, or join a gaming community or similar. Then you have friends in the game already and it saves you the never-works-out-anyways problems of trying to befriend strangers using the very limited group option and chat tools in the game.

Example... why would you want to run around with a stranger, talking on Direct Chat so everyone can hear your conversation, when you can do the same on teamspeak, ventrilo or mumble and noone but your friends / clan can hear it?

It's simply counterproductive to attempt to make friends using the direct chats and random encounters, and 9 out of 10 times it ends up with one survivor getting shot by the other.

Make friends outside game, not in the game.

You'll live longer if you do. That much has been proven over, and over and over and over and over again. There is a reason, based on the experience of hundreds if not thousands of players after interacting with eachother, why the rule "Trust noone" is the most prominent rule when it comes to surviving.

9/10? In my encounters, its more the opposite. 1/10 will betray you, at least on a primarily friendly server. I try to stick to servers with a 20-30 player cap.

[dallas 5195]

Funny how you're suppose to trust people, who tells you to trust no one. :)

I am almost always a friendly. However, I managed to find my self up at the NWAF with no map. This being annoying, I killed the first guy I saw. I got a gps out of the deal! I needed it bad enough I killed for it. Somthing I rarley find myself doing. Thats the thing about Dayz, you never know when you might find yourself as the bandit.

I'm intrigued by your definition of being almost friendly.

Edited February 19, 2013 by Dallas

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

Funny how you're suppose to trust people, who tells you to trust no one. :)

Yeah, that's kinda what I'm getting at - I found myself giving that advice in another thread, then a short while afterwards I stopped and actually thought about my own experiences and how they didn't really merit such a draconian response.

I'm wondering if it's simply something we're all saying simply because it's the de facto norm to do so, whereas the reality is actually a little less dramatic than it's made out to be.

[dallas 5195]

I always say: "Trust in solid cover."

Because the default standing animation is you pointing your weapon at what you're looking at, some people simply put a bullet through anyone looking at them. I disagree slightly with this practice, but I get the reason why. If you got two players pointing both their guns at each other's faces, someone will lose his nerve at some point.

Just like in real life, anyone who points a firearm at you, is only a small mistake away from pulling that trigger, taking your life. Whether it's intended or not, anyone pointing a weapon at you are always dangerous, they are either hostile or negligent, both equally dangerous. So I try never to point my weapon at strangers or allow them to get a clear bead on me. I always add an obstacle between us, before starting a conversation.

Edited February 19, 2013 by Dallas

[MiniAzza 3]

I've had varying experiences. Having spent most of time on Namalsk, i've found more friendlys there than Chernarus. I put it down to the wide availability of military grade loot in a number of places along with static heli crash sites.

I think if I ever got the railgun thingy, I would most certainly be hiding somewhere.

[Easy_Tiger (DayZ) 33]

I play lone wolf and I dont trust anyone unless they have proven themselves trust worthy on a number of occasions. For example I only trust one player on my server who was kind enough to lend me his suv (even flew me to it in his littlebird). To return the favour I gave him some dmr mags a week later after the ammo amount nerf which had left them as quite a rarity.

Dont feel that you have to team up or trust other players to progress in this game, you can survive perfectly well (if not better) on your own. An example of this from my experience is a comic little episode that unfolded last week when i went looting NW airfield.

I'd snuck in with no agro at all and had just left the fire station to get into the control tower. After getting into the control tower and having a look for loot I was about to leave when I heard shots. Watching from the control tower i saw 4 players emerge from the firestation and then sprint for the hangers. With every shot more and more zeds decended on them as they attempted to loot the hangers, one by one they were taken down by the zeds as they tried to move from hanger to hanger, ending with the last survior passing out and dying outside the last hanger.

I watched the entire thing unfold like a post apocolyptic benny hill sketch all the while laughing my ass off and then left the AF agro free because every zed in the area was feasting on their bodies outside the hangers :D

Lone wolf 1 : Teamed up friendlies 0

[FinalNinja447 129]

shoot everyone and everything will be alright in the end

Until you realise you have no friends ;)

[DazTroyer 227]

The only folk I trust are new spawns, as most of the time they are friendly and just want to get on with gearing up. However after that it's Defo trust no one and on maps like Taviana you can't even trust new spawns.

Edited February 19, 2013 by DazTroyer

[jk_scowling 44]

I don't even trust myself, I never turn my back on me.

[xwhitemousex 67]

9/10? In my encounters, its more the opposite. 1/10 will betray you, at least on a primarily friendly server. I try to stick to servers with a 20-30 player cap.

What is a primarily friendly server? Whitelisted?

On Whitelisted servers most people are friendly because you get to recognize the names that frequent the server and your reputation based on your behaviour carries alot more weight on whitelisted servers than it does on completely random servers.

If I start shooting everyone in sight, or betray them often, or steal from other people's supplies then I will get a bad rep on the server and obviously people will know who I am and what I stand for (which in this case would mean I get shot on sight by everyone). Of course, if I really want to (role)-play as a bandit then that would be how I rolled. But for the most part, people enjoy friendly chatter and helping eachother out, so whitelisted servers are by default friendly.

On random servers noone cares because the migration of players is so large that names don't matter. Only a very few are regulars, and most often regulars will create or move over to a whitelisted server anyhow. So you have a much more lawless community frequenting random servers, and thus there are (even) less consequences for your actions on random servers than whitelisted ones.

On random servers... don't know them, and not on teamspeak... then shoot them or leave the area.

On Whitelisted servers if someone starts shooting, at least on the whitelisted server I am on, it's very common to ask who is shooting and state whether you are friendly or not. For the most part it leads to a ceasefire, though not always (which is how it should be anyhow).

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

I play lone wolf and I dont trust anyone unless they have proven themselves trust worthy on a number of occasions. For example I only trust one player on my server who was kind enough to lend me his suv (even flew me to it in his littlebird). To return the favour I gave him some dmr mags a week later after the ammo amount nerf which had left them as quite a rarity.

Dont feel that you have to team up or trust other players to progress in this game, you can survive perfectly well (if not better) on your own. An example of this from my experience is a comic little episode that unfolded last week when i went looting NW airfield.

I'd snuck in with no agro at all and had just left the fire station to get into the control tower. After getting into the control tower and having a look for loot I was about to leave when I heard shots. Watching from the control tower i saw 4 players emerge from the firestation and then sprint for the hangers. With every shot more and more zeds decended on them as they attempted to loot the hangers, one by one they were taken down by the zeds as they tried to move from hanger to hanger, ending with the last survior passing out and dying outside the last hanger.

I watched the entire thing unfold like a post apocolyptic benny hill sketch all the while laughing my ass off and then left the AF agro free because every zed in the area was feasting on their bodies outside the hangers :D

Lone wolf 1 : Teamed up friendlies 0

Whilst an amusing story, that's not really anything to do with trusting folks you've just met - it's more about the merits of playing it slow and safe vs going full retard and thinking that more weapons will save you. Still, can imagine it was great fun to watch. :D

You are of course correct when you say that you don't have to team up to succeed in DayZ - most of my characters are lone wolves too. It just seems silly to me that the first thing we tell anyone who asks is 'don't trust anyone', when in reality, most folks are unlikely to shoot unless they feel threatened or provoked, and therefore we end up in a self-perpetuating cycle of paranoid players who automatically assume that everyone is trying to kill them.