I have an idea for helping with the KOS problem. Rocket should read.

[Rzach 29]

Alright so I am really getting annoyed with KOS. For a game that tries to make an "authentic" zombie survival simulator this game really fails to effectively deal with KOS.

 

First is real life people actually have a hard time killing other people unless they are acting under strong emotional duress or they are naturally wired to not be empathic (psychopathic or aspd individuals). People who are not mentally equipped to be killers suffer from a variety of problems when they take another persons life. The military and the police both spend millions of dollars to provide ongoing training to their members so they can instill a shoot first, think about consequences later reaction. They also spend millions on counselling to try and deal with the after math of their members having to shoot at other people. 

 

Unless DAYZ is trying to be a game about people with antisocial personality disorder surviving the zombie apocalypse there needs to be some mechanic that deals with KOS. I propose that the developers introduce a stress mechanic. If you kill another person you gain stress. Stress depletes with time and can be stopped temporarily by having antidepressants or stimulants.

 

As your stress level goes up it would take longer periods of time to go decrease and it would have a couple of debilitating effects on the character. First stress shouldn't immediately bother your character. It should go up rapidly but the effects should take a few minutes or more to begin to set in. 

 

At low levels it should cause your hands to shake so your aiming is messed up and you still lose food and water from containers when you use them. This would be the stress level of someone who has killed one or two people recently.

 

At moderate levels it should make you more prone to getting infections and diseases. This is accurate to real life as stress has been proven to make your immune system decrease it's effectiveness. The hand shaking should become more pronounced. Your character should need food and water more frequently as their appetite increases due to stress. This is the stress level of someone who has killed 3 to 5 people recently.     

 

At high levels it should make you bleed out faster as the stress increases your blood pressure. Infections should be even easier to acquire and harder to get rid of. And the hand shaking should become very severe. If you want more realism you should have characters at this level of stress sometimes fail to shoot their weapon when the mouse button is clicked.This is the stress level of someone who has killed more than 5 people recently.

 

Antidepressants should temporarily make the hand shaking go away but have no actual effect on the stress level. You could even include other drugs which would alleviate the hand shaking even better like muscle relaxants, opiates (another use for morphine), or other narcotics. Antidepressants and other drugs should be very rare. 

 

If more realism is wanted a character should have a 1 in 25 chance of being immune to stress to simulate the natural occurrence of antisocial disorders among people. A character shouldn't know they are antisocial until they kill someone and don't have any reaction to it. 

 

This system won't stop KOS but should discourage it. Players who wish to go on murderous rampages or kill every other player they meet would be able to hunt for drugs that would suppress the symptoms they experience. Or they could just go out into the woods away from other players for a while and let the symptoms fade over time as the stress level goes down.

 

The symptoms should have an onset time of about 10 minutes. This would allow players who are being shot at to respond without having to worry to much. Then if they retreat or hide for a bit the symptoms should fade. It should take about 15 minutes for a single kills worth of stress to fade. 

 

For more realism you could simply add in the ability to have a stroke or heart attack from stress. The stroke or heart attack would have a small chance to kill you but normally would just cause you to lose a large chunk of blood. Or you could add in auditory hallucinations like weapons being loaded and footsteps nearby to simulate the paranoia a person would begin to feel under such combat related stress. 

 

Anyways thats my idea for dealing with the KOS mentality.

 

As the game currently stands I feel that it becomes a bit to much of a game and less of an experience because the fact is that killing others has no effect on you unlike real life. If the game is about normal survivors then they should not be able to just become murder machines without suffering some kind of debilitating mental damage. Most of the KOS I have witnessed has been the kind of behavior that would flag a person as being mentally unstable in real life. 

 

Thanks for your time,

rzach

[Mays (DayZ) 154]

In reply to the first sentence - I didn't realize killing people wasn't realistic? You're telling me everyone would be happy families in a zombie apocalypse?

[Sneakers O'Toole 57]

Cry more please.

 

Or just wait until you can have custom servers where all you softcore pussies can sing songs around a campfire, without fear from 'bad men with guns'; and just simply worry about boringly predictable AI Z's.

[Konna 149]

Stress, sanity, blood on hands.. It's part of the game. Stop making these suggestions. And i'll admit it, i only read the few first lines. Why you ask? Because i know where it's going.

Remain unseen, only reveal yourself if you have an escape route if shit hits the fan.

Edited January 9, 2014 by Konna

[codave 121]

The human race invented genocide, man.

Any species capable of turning ten million of their own into air pollution is capable of anything.

Also, TL:DR

[Timmymachine109 (DayZ) 235]

Use the search function...this has been suggested like 1238972139 times already. Probably been suggested already today

[captainvette2112 84]

First of all... there isnt a KoS problem!!!!  This is a post apocalyptic game.. people are gonna be killed. Get it.  Accept it. Deal with it. 

 

Secondly,  the first point makes your entire post meaningless 

[randomtask 18]

Great Ideas!

[Bakercompany86 347]

[gray-z@hotmail.co.uk 84]

Much of what he said about the effects on your mental health from taking a life are quite true. Basically PTSD.

 

Although I like the idea as far as adding realism to the characters reactions I think this is something that shouldn't really be added because to 'keep it real' the same mechanic has to applied to seeing dead bodies, evading gunfire, just encountering zeds let alone taking them out. Really this could break the game and give those with the 1 in 25 chance a massive advantage. Also, what happens when it's not your chance and you have to kill someone to defend yourself..... are you still penalised? I love realism at its extremes but we have to also consider playability

[Rzach 29]

In reply to the first sentence - I didn't realize killing people wasn't realistic? You're telling me everyone would be happy families in a zombie apocalypse?

 

The military has proven time and again that even trained soldiers will find themselves unable to fire at another living being if given enough time to think about. It takes a split second to feel empathy for another living being. Your brain, unless you have an antisocial spectrum disorder, is wired for empathy as an adult. If you have empathy you will suffer consequences for killing. This isn't some kind of weird morality but simple brain chemistry. Killing another person causes mental trauma that can take decades to overcome and may not be able to be dealt with at all.

 

I am not saying to stop the killing. I am saying let people suffer something for having done it.

[pteryx 14]

Go stand on the elektro hospital and tell everyone your plan through direct chat.

 

In an apocalypse people would be the bigger threat, not zombies.  The game is designed for hardcore players who are not willing to lose everything just to let someone pass by and loot things they may need.  Players who think Dayz should punish it's players for taking out threats should rent a private hive server on the mod and play by themselves.

[Konna 149]

 

I am not saying to stop the killing. I am saying let people suffer something for having done it.

 

But.. Why? Why should one suffer from that if the option is given in the first place. I rarely kill on sight, enjoy approaching survivors (in safe ways) and offering help/food/whatever, but sometimes i just have to do it.

[codave 121]

You know many soldiers that have killed up close?

How about murderers? Civilians that have killed one or multiple people for whatever reason.

I have met and interacted with MANY of both examples for prolonged periods of time.

Sure it bothers some people. Many it doesn't. You're talking out of your ass.

[Rzach 29]

First of all... there isnt a KoS problem!!!!  This is a post apocalyptic game.. people are gonna be killed. Get it.  Accept it. Deal with it. 

 

Secondly,  the first point makes your entire post meaningless 

 

Actually there is a problem. If real soldiers can't just fire blindly without consequence how can a game claim to be an authentic experience without having repercussions. BTW, I KOS. The way the game currently stands there is no reason for me to help you because a single m4 round to the head will kill you. And then I get all of your gear. I see it as a valid survival strategy for a shooter game. But this game is supposed to be an authentic experience. That means there should be consequences. 

[Furtherado 100]

If society breaks down, death, and eventually murder will become extremely common, and not affiliated with the stress you mention.

And even if it were the case, all the survivors we play as would be nervous, hallucinating wrecks already. What are we? Magically spawned fully grown people, that just today realized that maybe there`s an apocalypse going on. 

 

The stress "normal" people experience when murdering someone is, in large part, contributed to the fear of being caught, ostracized and punished.

 

You can`t compare the situation of a standard European/North American society with that of a society where laws, jobs, infrastructure, military and police don`t exist. Where existence is about surviving another day, and not about juggling time for spending time with the family, leisure, work and friends. 

[Caboose187 (DayZ) 3036]

.  Players who think Dayz should punish it's players for taking out threats should rent a private hive server on the mod and play by themselves.

Ya because fresh players are such a threat.  Keep on trucking gun toting hero, keep on trucking.  I personally can't wait for all the threads about adding in k/d/r

[Mays (DayZ) 154]

The military has proven time and again that even trained soldiers will find themselves unable to fire at another living being if given enough time to think about. It takes a split second to feel empathy for another living being. Your brain, unless you have an antisocial spectrum disorder, is wired for empathy as an adult. If you have empathy you will suffer consequences for killing. This isn't some kind of weird morality but simple brain chemistry. Killing another person causes mental trauma that can take decades to overcome and may not be able to be dealt with at all.

 

I am not saying to stop the killing. I am saying let people suffer something for having done it.

Edited January 9, 2014 by Mays

[Timmymachine109 (DayZ) 235]

If it has got to the point where so many people have died from zombies that there isn't many people left I'm pretty sure it would be a "kill or be killed" mentality!

[Arciere 10]

Even suggesting that the main idea of this game is killing zombies will get you bashed on any forum relating to DayZ. 

 

I agree that the ratio of bandits to friendly players is much larger than it should be, but your suggestions as realistic as they are won't help the situation. 

 

The few main things that need to be fixed in order to fix that ratio, would be.

 

1. More zombies. A fuck ton of zombies actually, if zombies were as dangerous as bandits or more so, people would team up instead of killing each other.

2. Stop the server jumping. If it was harder to find the loot, not everyone would be fully geared on every server and people might work together more. 

 

In the stage right now, it just doesn't make sense for people not to kill other players. There isn't a whole lot to do otherwise.

 

There are a few things that you can do to help you survive. Stick to the tree lines or forests whenever possible, explore the north half of the map, there are quite a few good places up that direction, plus a majority of the players up there are in the same boat as you. You can also inspect towns or building before you loot them. Open doors and no zombies are a dead giveaway that its not worth your time. 

[captainvette2112 84]

Actually there is a problem. If real soldiers can't just fire blindly without consequence how can a game claim to be an authentic experience without having repercussions. BTW, I KOS. The way the game currently stands there is no reason for me to help you because a single m4 round to the head will kill you. And then I get all of your gear. I see it as a valid survival strategy for a shooter game. But this game is supposed to be an authentic experience. That means there should be consequences. 

Consequences from who what what exactly?  This is a post apocalyptic world.  There are no consequences from society, they dont have to answer to anyone, nor would there be any mental/moral consequences.  I dont want to hear about any PTSD/sanity crap.  These are survivors remember???  

 

They lived through the outbreak, they would have already seen mass death, they would be mentally numb to death, killing a stranger would be like squashing a spider. 

[Furtherado 100]

 

Would you have time to think about it? You are scavenging for scraps of food and drink in an urban area, you are starving, suddenly you see someone with a large sack of potatoes, you have a gun, if you starve any longer you will be too weak to fight impending death, what do you do? 

[dgeesio 1034]

basically heres how it works panic starts everyone trys to grab everything possible of value or substance after a short period of time resources become sparse then time/danger value is worked out over getting resources.

 

then we get a shop 4 cans of food left. 1 person armed hungry vs 4 people unarmed after the same four cans. whos going to end up with them? the person armed or willing to do whats needed to get the food or item .

 

there are no rules no punishments so its just down to almost animal simplistic behavior survival of the fittest.

 

as you would of seen on many animal documentaries it never ends well ! 

 

this is what people need to acknowledge !

 

 

the world is a bitter place it isnt hold hands forever. nature is scarey we are even worse.

 

rocket has said he doesn't want to change how the game plays and leave choices upto us ! so if it plays out like it does naturally people need to accept reality and just make good decisions on how they make movements in game and choices. you don't need to stop KOS you need to think about how you play ! spawning and just being shot is shit that is true but all other player related deaths sorry you just chose the wrong way choice place to be and that's part of surviving. do it better !

 

once you start adding rules from one persons vison you have corrupted the game as each person vision is always different so how can one person be correct for all ?

[Cydone 41]

Op actually has a very well thought through idea that you kids should listen to or go play one of your useless little games, that the market is full of.

 

Meeting people deep in the wild, and saying "hi" to them, would rarely result in a gun fireing rampage from the message recieving party.

 

KOS has nothing to do with reality, killing other players sometimes does. The KOS in Dayz is very unreal as it is now, and other players are seen only as loot boxes or possible threats to iliminate.

 

There is no insentive what so ever to let another player live, yet in real life you would have hundres or thousands of good reasons. Let me name you a few if you are still 12 and havent grown up yet.

 

1. The fear of going totally insane from killing other people (Go read Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment if you want more in depth wisdom on how this might affect you kids)

2. The fear that you just killed the last human being on earth, and now you have to live with the zombies

3. Company. If you have been in the wild for weeks, you would never ever just shoot someone down, you would very carefully try and make contact.

4. Grouping against zombies. This is one of the things I fail to understand. In an apocalypse, you would be desperate to find people with whom you could group up with and fight off the zombies, not so in Dayz. (maybe if they made the zombies a real threat, they are pussy easy to kill right now)

5. Empathy. You see a guy bleeding, dying, and you shoot him in his face to take his gear? come on, you may be 12, but this is insane behaviour that hardly exists in real life, even considering an apocalypse. Empathy is one of the main drivers of human evolution.

 

Point is, in a game with no real consequences for killing other players, it will be just end up becoming your every day lousy and super boring and immature first person shooter experience.

 

The OP is not talking about taking the HARDCORENESS out of the game, but to make it more real, more mature, more like real life.

 

Kids go back to school please, and stop ruining our otherwise fantastic apocalypse simulator!

Edited January 9, 2014 by Cydone

[bigfatpolly 8]

Might as well add masturbation to lose stress as well. That way I can just kill a guy and have my guy rub one out in a bush so his stress decreases.