How to make friends and keep them (both a suggestion to players and developers)

[alleycat 135]

How to make friends and keep them

 

 

This is a two part post. The first is about how to make friends and the second, how to keep them is more of a suggestion for developers.

 

 

Story time:

 

For the fun of it I patrolled the coast and chased after new players I found. Greeted them and after some convincing and chasing ("Hey I am friendly") some took the risk and entered a chat with me. I asked to trade items and offered some of my stuff for free. Handed out things like melee weapons, maps, food etc. Most players were thankful and happy about it, ranging from grabbing the free stuff and bolting, suspecting a trap, from glowing thanking and cheering. Even partied up with some and we traveled for a bit.

 

That is how you make friends. Approach players and trade/hand out stuff.

 

 

 

Now for the problem, how to keep friends. Even if you take the huge risk of engaging in a friendly conversation, your good deeds will never count.

 

Because they cant tell who you are (lack of name display).

To fix this, I would like to suggest a name tag that is displayed. Like so:

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/721993905112026251/57572733F565E3DB76F1D04BFD8C8B51BBE4F820/

 

I coded this for my arma3 server. It basically shows the name of the player you aim at within a specific range. In dayz this could work like this:

 

-If you are within 5m and it is daylight and you aim at a persons face, his name would display.

 

 

Why do it? It is very important to identify if someone was nice to you. Because if you ever come across that guy you helped out at the beach again, but in balota, with everyone being armed with rifles, there is no way of recognizing that guy and people instantly shoot when they are armed and near good loot areas. This way players could build a reputation (if they frequent the same servers often) for being a specific type of player (trustworthy, carebear, bandit) without having "hard indicators".

 

Currently the game gives no incentive to be good. Last night I hesitated to shoot a guy in balota, both of us armed to the teeth. We both backed away, then I turned around and kept walking and he opened fire after a few seconds, I hid and ran away.

All of these nice streams from rocket where players party up and socailize never happen with complete strangers, unless its at the beach and now one has good loot or even guns. Also I suspect the closed alpha testers probably feared becoming bandits because in a smaller test group it is EASIER TO GET A SPECIFIC REPUTATION. If you keep shooting people on sight in a community of 100 players, you will get known for that (if you can be identified). And if you are being nice and helpful, the same applies (if you can be identified).

[bTd_AuzToddTV 1]

Hey man, i feel you're pain, i suggest you download teamspeak, and come play with some real friendly people

Here's the link for teamspeak : http://www.teamspeak.com/?page=downloads

And heres bTd/Brothers Til Death Clan, Teamspeak adress, come and play! - ts36.gameservers.com:9462

[alleycat 135]

Thanks but I rather would have a systemic game mechanic that incentives socializing with other players

[xInfinityx 44]

You can tell people your name. Name tags break immersion and also make it so people can see you if you are hiding.  

[thelonewarrior 886]

Also not being able to recognise a person by looking at their face breaks immersion

That's why he said 5metres, if your that close and haven't spotted them, your probably already dead

[alleycat 135]

No they dont break immersion. Not being able to regognize a player breaks immersion. Also nametags can be limited to a really short range and only if you exactly aim at a players face. I am not talking about floating names 100m away. read the post

[alleycat 135]

On top of that, the game should really add things that incentivize carebearing. In the mod we had the bandit system, which was flawed in some way, but no system or incentive to be a carebear at all in retail would be bad.