Way to distinguish friendlies

[dreadstorm 3]

Ive found in groups of larger than 3 it's hard to tell who's who: and some new player comes it's difficult to tell if they were in our group. Also it's not easy who's avatar is talking on comms. So here's a solution that helps player co-operation whilst not nerfing pvp:

When close to someone you have the option in the mouse wheel to show YOURSELF as friendly. This means they (and them only) see your name when they point their gun/crosshairs at you. You would hope they would return the favour to you so you can see them. Because you are revealing yourself to a single individual you arnt exposed to any enemies, and you can't force anyone to reveal their identity to you.

Of course you would have to be careful who you mark yourself as friendly towards, but I can't see any other cons.

Discuss

[cat (DayZ) 22]

Great idea I think.

+rep

[Ungotter 2]

Sounds like a good solution to me, I did figure that grouping up becomes difficult when you can't see anyone's name. In reality you could clearly distinguish people's faces, there needs to be some means of this in the mod too.

[tajin 17]

Why make two threads for the same thing ?

[Blitzy 12]

Support the suggestion. In a lot of Garry's Mod RP scripts, the player has the ability to 'introduce' themselves to nearby people (by pressing F2 and selecting the audible range between 'whisper', 'say' and 'yell'). Before introduction, players only see the physical description of a character (usually written by the player during character creation) when they hover their crosshair over them. After introduction, players can see the name.

So it goes from:

'Black hair, grey eyes, a mustache and a gold tooth in the back of his mouth. Always looks so serious. He wears a grey T-shirt, jeans and big floppy red clown shoes.'

to:

'Zibbleplix the Zombie Clown'

Perhaps something similar can be worked out here in DayZ? Also, to prevent scanning the area for survivor locations, assign it so these descs/names don't pop up unless you're within a certain distance i.e the realistic distance required to notice a person's characteristics or recognise a familiar?

[Stubbies 67]

Ive found in groups of larger than 3 it's hard to tell who's who: and some new player comes it's difficult to tell if they were in our group. Also it's not easy who's avatar is talking on comms. So here's a solution that helps player co-operation whilst not nerfing pvp:

When close to someone you have the option in the mouse wheel to show YOURSELF as friendly. This means they (and them only) see your name when they point their gun/crosshairs at you. You would hope they would return the favour to you so you can see them. Because you are revealing yourself to a single individual you arnt exposed to any enemies' date=' and you can't force anyone to reveal their identity to you.

Of course you would have to be careful who you mark yourself as friendly towards, but I can't see any other cons.

Discuss

[/quote']

Great idea, mark as friendly at target. Must be in a certain range too of course.

+1

[dreadstorm 3]

Hey guys, sorry for the thread duplication- either the forum went down or my connection to it died just as I posted the first one. When I checked it didn't show so I repeated. If admin could delete other thread thanks.

[Vietcongcobain 1]

i figured out a way....in real life we can tell each other apart. We need to be able to label our party sometimes just to keep track of who's who....well one abuse I can think of off the top of my head in just allowing us to mark people for future reference in a cheap way would be like if some guy robs you point blank you mark him and happen to run into him later and kill him with out putting no effort into doing detective work....now in real life that would be the equivalent of being robbed by a masked gunman sprinkling holy water knowing who he now is no matter where he goes seeing him one day and killing him....how do you know it was him if he wears a mask? So that won't work and will be abused....BUT if you allow some one to label you and give them the name then things get interesting....let's say team leader wants to label your party so he pulls up a menu and picks label you....he will know its you because a square will be on you and a square will be on him from your perspective you can accept or decline to be labeled and if you do accept pick a name for yourself to be called. NOW your name will show up whenever your in HIS field of vision....you will still maintain your anonymity with everyone whom u chose not to be labeled by.....is this something that can be done?

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

There is one temporary fix to this, make yourself a nice custom face, turns out my "baby face" skin is pretty easy to identify :D

[Boss_Awesome 0]

What about custom clothing or the like? My least favorite thing about the mod is that all survivors wear the same clothing and all bandits wear the same clothing. Facial features are hard to distinguish during a stressful situation. If there turns out to be a wide variety of clothing people may even gain a reputation as an individual due to misdeeds or kindnesses. "Hey it's the red shirt blue jean guy, he saved my life let's help him out." OR "Hey it's blue hat short shorts, he's a murderer, shoot him!"

[Capital 5]

I do NOT support this, sorry.

The nametags on Easy mode are silly enough. If you want to enter into a pact with someone, you should have to stick together, communicate well and perhaps even try to memorize details about the person.

We had a group of four, two bandits, two survivors, moving through NW airfield. Our point-man moved up without tell us, to a treeline across the way. When we turned to see where he went, we spotted a bandit in the woods across the way looking at us. I knew it was our point man, because I was paying attention, but our spotter panicked, and shot him in the head. Luckily he wasn't killed and we were able to resuscitate him, but it's those kind of awesome scenarios that we would miss out on if we had some kind of game-y tagging system.

This game is not for the feint of heart or weak of constitution. It's not for everyone and I sincerely hope that features like this do not make it into the final game.

I do however support the idea of the player being able to choose their own skin (discarding the bandit/survivor skins altogether and just allowing players to use any skin from the OA/BAF/PMC library - except ghillie, suits, that'd be too easy and everyone would wear one - they should be an item you craft).

[Vietcongcobain 1]

^ in real life you know what everybody looks like...we all look the same in day z lol

[Capital 5]

^ in real life you know what everybody looks like...we all look the same in day z lol

As I said, allow players to choose their own skin, make sure you know what your buddy's skin looks like, what kind of glasses they wear, weapons they carry and what face they have. Also it will help a LOT when direct comms are fixed.

We all decided to use the William W. face with the blue-white face-paint to readily identify our clan.

Be smart and you will survive. Be stupid and you will die.

[statistx 5]

custom player models would help too.

edit: oh...was suggested allready, but yeah, i support this

[AlanDemarest 0]

I support this suggestion.

[karbiner 29]

Let your team including yourself take the William Wallace face at the player options xD eassiest of all faces to remember ±D

[Shyoto 1]

In the same vein as the OP, how about using ArmA's squad system?

Have it so you can offer new friendlies a place in your squad, (if they're within 5m or w/e) and they can accept/decline.

Combining this with the Custom Models vein, we could potentially take away the floating green diamonds that mark squaddies (not a fan of those myself) and perhaps add, say, a green arm-band to those in your squad, only visible to your squad?

*shrug* I'm throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks here :D

[dreadstorm 3]

Simple extension of this would be to add a range, so if your FO runs off into the tree line the scenario with your scout shooting him could still happen, even reduce the range at night since more blue on blue at night.

The idea that I need to make myself William Wallace to be recognised is retarded. Immersion is lost less in a game when something unnatural is in the game (ie names above characters) compared to when something trivial takes more effort than is natural to do. This is why a well designed HUD or well placed tooltip can improve a game. You say that you "pay attention" so you know who is who, but concentrating on the guy with the black T and scoped rifle is Jeff, and the guy in the black T and winchester is Danny means I'm not lost in the game. Having a floating name above their heads if I point at them would improve immersion because I'm spending the same effort as I would in RL. Our brains recognise different faces really well, but imagine if the entire population of the world were identical, like when you see twins. Unless Rockets going to improve facial graphics to that of La Noire (he's not) then this is the best thing to compensate for the lack of facial detail.

This suggestion is nothing like easy mode, because it's Infomation you choose to give to another player, so you can't reveal hidden enemy's by scanning a treelike. And it's not like and MMORPG were there's constantly a name above because it does require you look at somebody.

[hexik 1]

Or, you could just wait until players can select their own skins so then you would know who is who at first glance instead of having to ask or accidently shoot them.

[dreadstorm 3]

I support having different skins, but in RL the primary way of recognising people is by looking at their faces. I just walked into a computer lab at uni, I recognised a friend not by his clothes or accessories like sunglasses but because his face is unique. The Arma engine doesn't have enough detailed faces to make the same recognition, so something else is needed.

[harryzhe 28]

I support having different skins' date=' but in RL the primary way of recognising people is by looking at their faces. I just walked into a computer lab at uni, I recognised a friend not by his clothes or accessories like sunglasses but because his face is unique. The Arma engine doesn't have enough detailed faces to make the same recognition, so something else is needed.

[/quote']

I disagree. In a day to day situation when everyone's changing their clothes this is true, but in a 'survival" scenario like dayZ, you would come to recognise people by their kit, which would be whatever they could scrape together when shit hit the fan - and thus have quite notable variation from person to person and thus be pretty distinctive. The only problem is the kit is pretty much the same for all at the moment. I'd be supportive of either randomised kit each time you start a character (and you could get used to the appearance of group-mates naturally that way) or if that's impossible, perhaps some way to make squads like in OA, and people in your squad can see your name - but only if you're less than 20 metres away, or something.

[dreadstorm 3]

I disagree. In a day to day situation when everyone's changing their clothes this is true' date=' but in a 'survival" scenario like dayZ, you would come to recognise people by their kit, which would be whatever they could scrape together when shit hit the fan - and thus have quite notable variation from person to person and thus be pretty distinctive. The only problem is the kit is pretty much the same for all at the moment. I'd be supportive of either randomised kit each time you start a character (and you could get used to the appearance of group-mates naturally that way) or if that's impossible, perhaps some way to make squads like in OA, and people in your squad can see your name - but only if you're less than 20 metres away, or something.

[/quote']

To an extent yes, but even if you had 400 unique weapons it would not be the same as the level of uniqueness on a face. That being said, I do like this idea, and would like to see in it in game to see if it helps. When I think of my normal arma Ace encounters you can tell team mates by gear to an extent, but you also have lips moving when talk, AND a name above their head.

[xazper 3]

There is one temporary fix to this' date=' make yourself a nice custom face, turns out my "baby face" skin is pretty easy to identify :D

[/quote']

Good way to identify but if you do this, F*** YOU! I absolutely hate when you're in the middle of a gunfight and some a**hole connects and gives everyone a "You are missing a file: tacticool awesome sunglasses" this has gotten me, and I'm sure others, killed before.

[harryzhe 28]

To an extent yes' date=' but even if you had 400 unique weapons it would not be the same as the level of uniqueness on a face. That being said, I do like this idea, and would like to see in it in game to see if it helps. When I think of my normal arma Ace encounters you can tell team mates by gear to an extent, but you also have lips moving when talk, AND a name above their head.

[/quote']

I don't mean just weapons, clothing too. Silhouette, you know, all those recognisable things. Backpacks surely help a bit already but there's not that much variation with them. Even a couple of different hats would probably go a long way. (inb4 tf2 comment)

I can see what you're saying, the face is the most instantly recognisable thing, but that's not really representable in arma. You need to simulate it abstractly with something like a nameplate at really close range. You're pretty much never going to just instantly recognise a different texture on the same head mesh as if it were the real person's face - and not everyone uses a custom texture anyway.

You have to think in terms of what can reasonably be represented, and if it can't be, some other way to do it more abstractly but to the same end.

I still think different clothes would help a ton with this. That's not to say people should be able to choose what they wear - It'd be a nice feature but really, not a priority. Randomised troop "uniform" at each character spawn would work just fine.

[dreadstorm 3]

I can see what you're saying' date=' the face is the most instantly recognisable thing, but that's not really representable in arma. You need to simulate it abstractly with something like a nameplate at really close range.

[/quote']

That's what my suggestion is like. I'm not after seeing my friends halfway down a field, but up close when we're all together it would be good. Make the range less at night too.