The ONLY Realistic Way to Prevent Deathmatching: Make DayZ a Living Hell

[whatup2003 67]

At the current state of the game, hackers(cheaters) and dupers are the biggest problem. With these people still around, no game mechanic change can stop excessive PVP. Another major issue is the lack of end-game activities.

[RoastLamb 4]

I think we can all agree that there is simply too much murder right now. There's no incentive not to kill. We've tried bandit skins, getting rid of global chat...All of these are very gamey solutions. And none of them have worked.

Here's what I'm proposing, Rocket and team. Rather than come up with some mechanic to help out one side or the other, or do some kind of balancing act...Do something different. The reason we don't work together is because we can survive alone. The reason we shoot on sight is because we have nothing to gain from teaming up.

So let's set the world on fire. Let's watch it burn. Let us feel fear; That same fear we all felt when our boots first landed on the shores of Chernarus.

Let's Make DayZ a Living Nightmare.

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You already start with next to nothing. Good. That sets the table. Canned Food is scarce. Canteens are as precious as gold.Weapons are a luxury, and ammo doesn't last long. Finding the tools you need to start a fire and cook a meal? Good luck. And if you don't find food or water, both of which are incredibly scarce? Enjoy dehydration, or starvation. You won't just die from some ticking blood bar. Your vision will blur, you'll be tortured by the sounds of your stomach aching for food. You'll barely be able to keep crawling forward. You'll pass out from exhaustion, and die curled up on the ground, without so much as a whimper.

The Zeds are more numerous. They prowl the streets of cities in packs, and must be avoided if you hope to survive. The Zombies have begun to migrate to forests, and herds of them roam the countryside. Nowhere is safe from the infected, and their numbers continue to grow. Areas that have been densely populated with infected for a long period of time are now more difficult to breathe in. Death stinks the air, and if you spend too much time there, you might get sick. You'll cough if you don't have a surgical mask, or at least a scarf to wrap around your nose and mouth.

And what of your injuries? That scratch could get infected if left untreated. You'll need sterilization materials, such as rubbing alcohol or peroxide. That last bout with the Infected didn't break your leg, but you sure as hell can't run on it. Maybe you got lucky and it hit your arm instead. Can't use your primary with only one good arm. Morphine isn't going to heal those broken bones of yours...Only give you the ability to walk on it for a period of time. And if you keep using Morphine? Well, you'll become addicted. Then you'll need it if you don't want the shakes, hallucinations, and sickness.

The environment is unforgiving and harsh. The coast is plagued with deep fogs, and ripping coastal winds that chill you to the bone. If you manage to make it off the coast, beware the sun. Running too long in the sun can cause heat stroke and exhaustion. If you take refuge in the mountains, be prepared for a drop in temperature, and cold wet nights. Further north, expect cloudy skies and torrential rain which chills you if left unchecked.

You're only one human being against a world that is designed to kill you. So how do you survive?

You MUST cooperate.

Maybe that scarce can of beans, or that canteen of water, can satiate 2 people rather than one. Maybe a pair of eyes covering your six increases your chances of survival when scavenging in an infested city. Maybe when you can't walk on your leg, a friend could take you on their shoulder so you can walk again. Maybe someone could set and splint that broken leg of yours. Maybe someone can bring that fever down by tending to you while you're sick and unable to take care of yourself. Maybe being within close proximity to others makes you share body heat when the temperature drops. Maybe that other person has the matches, and you've got the hatchet.

Maybe, when the world is a living hell...Other people are your only hope to survive.

It's just a thought...But I think it's the only way to keep DayZ from becoming Deathmatch + Zombies.

P.S. Might I remind everyone that this is ALPHA, and this is exactly the time when we should be trying insane, crazy stuff like this. You don't get that chance when a game is released, or even in Beta stage. We should be doing this NOW, just to see how it works.

Edit: Perfect description as to why bandits should love these changes...Written by a bandit:

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A mod has requested I form a list of proposed features so this can be moved to the suggestion forum:

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- High-End Military-Grade Loot increased rarity. This should only be for the very dedicated/lucky. ONLY spawns in Military Areas.

- CZ550 replaces most Sniper Rifle spawns.

- AKM and AK-74 more likely rifle spawns than M4.

- Deer Stands no longer spawn military weapons, only ammo.

- Small chance of AKM/AK-74 to spawn in Residential areas.

- All Basic Survival Consumables spawn less often (Food, Canteens, Soda, Etc.)

- All Basic Survival Consumables can now be shared between two players for full effect.

- Hunger goes down slower, but leads to Starvation when blinking. Starvation causes quicker loss of stamina, growling sound, and eventually the shakes, inability to run, passing out, and death.

- Thirst remains at the same rate, but leads to Dehydration when blinking. Dehydration causes loss of speed, blurred vision, and eventually the inability to sprint coupled with passing out. Hallucinations as a warning before death.

- Zed count increased.

- Zeds can hear gunshots from further away. However, rather than immediately locking on, they will simply investigate the noise if the player is out of their line of sight.

- If many zed are in an area, they form a pack and begin roaming further than their default AI patrol path. These have the ability to leave cities.

- Packs are more common in cities.

- Zeds spawn more in the outskirts of cities ("Wandering").

- Chance of zeds spawning in the wilderness. Chance of zed packs spawning in the wilderness as well.

- Areas where Zed have been present for long periods of time (Parts of cities) have a chance to begin to become hazardous. Players must either find Scarves or Surgical Masks to help prevent infection from these areas. They will cough loudly if they do not have either of these items.

- It's a no-brainer that other players are more helpful around more Zed.

- Injury system expanded. Players can now get scratches from infected that can cause sickness if left untreated.

- Scratches varry in intensity from a minor fleshwound (Requires bandage, does not bleed) to huge gashes (Loss of limb function, bleeds and requires bandage).

- Players can wash their wounds with water, or cleanse them with rubbing alcohol or peroxide (Both of which can be found in Residential loot). Peroxide or Alcohol completely cleans wound, where water still has a chance of infection.

- Serious gashes can cause a limb to lose function until the wound heals. Limping on a leg, or unable to use a primary weapon due to an injured arm are possible scenarios.

- The only way to break bones will be severe Zed injury (Multiple Zeds Multiple Times), or falling.

- Broken bones cannot be mended without a splint. Splints are wood and bandages.

- You can set the bones yourself, but you risk permanent damage to the limb (Decreased speed for legs, Less accuracy for arms). Another player can set your broken bones with no risk of permanent injury.

- You can set the bones without Morphine, but you risk passing out for a long time from the pain instead (The bone is not set properly). Painkillers will allow you to set a bone, but with blurred vision for a time, and a loud cry is let out.

- Once a splint is in place, the limb must mend for a full day of game time. You can limp on a leg, and can only use a primary for an arm. If Painkillers are taken, you can limp faster.

- If you take 2 doses of Morphine, you can limp on a broken leg. Continued use will enable you to keep limping, but you run the risk of overdose.

- Another player can help you walk, "Fireman" style. Using this, you can limp considerably faster on injured, broken, or splinted legs. You can both use secondary weapons during this.

- Antibiotic spawns increased, still only in hospitals.

- Infections come in different varieties: Cold, Flu, and Injury Infections.

- Cold contracted from low body temperature. Causes coughing, decrease in stamina, possible fever if conditions do not improve. The body will recover, slowly, if given enough rest.

- Flu can only be contracted in hazardous areas. It causes vomiting, leading to the shakes and dehydration. It has a high chance of fever, and can lead to death if fluids and food are not maintained.

- Injury Infections are the result of untreated wounds. These lead to shaking, loss of limb function, 100% chance of fever, and eventually death. The only cure for this is antibiotics.

- Fever causes loss of ability to jog/run/sprint, shakes, dehydration, passing out, and if disease is not cured, death.

- The healing process can be accelerated by other players. They can tend to your fever with a damp cloth, provide you with body heat if you have a cold, and keep you fed/hydrated when you're passed out. (They can also go out and get medicine!)

- While not diseases, Overheating and Heat Stroke are introduced. Overheating occurs while running in the sun for too long. This causes accelerated thirst consumption, and slightly blurred vision. Taking a break, then running in the shade will prevent this.

- If the player continues to run for too long without brief breaks (We're talking 10 seconds every 10 minutes kind of thing, no big deal), they will exhaust themselves, leaving themselves open to Heat Stroke if it's daytime (Excluding Sunrise and Sunset). They could potentially pass out for a VERY long time due to Heat Stroke if they do not take breaks.

- Players can walk during the day to receive no negative effects. This means players without water can still travel in the heat of the day without having to worry about Heat Stroke.

- Different regions and time of day in those regions now have different effects within the environment.

- The coast has deep fog in the morning and at night. During the day, whipping winds cause wind chill to those out in the open.

- Open plains during the heat of the day are very hot can cause exhaustion in players much quicker.

- Mountains are damp and misty in the mornings, causing temperature to drop.

- Forested areas are more prone to rain. This is even more so on forested mountains.

- Rain does not chill the player immediately, but if the player does not find heat or shelter soon, they will become soaked and their body temperature will drop, causing mild shivering. This takes longer during the day.

- Heavy Rain will accelerate the chilling process, and also make players unable to build fires in the open. They must find shelter or a dense forest to light a fire in. Heavy Rain will also give a light fog to the area, making it harder to see. Heavy Rain is more common in forests and forested mountains.

- Night will accelerate temperature-dropping effects.

- Being near another player will cause you to "share body heat". This will decelerate the temperature drop greatly.

- Two players can contribute to a fire pit, causing a bigger and hotter fire.

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I FULLY realize that many if not most of these features will simply not be possible as DayZ is a MOD. However, my hope is that systems like these will be considered once DayZ becomes a stand-alone game...Which I have full confidence that it will.

(That was quite a lot of writing...Whoo...)

A death from pvp should result in a temporary ban from the server (by server i mean the whole dayz network, not just one server), say 15mins - 1 hour before respawn (reincarnation). Death means something! The thinking is, if a bandit wants to engage, he runs the risk of retaliation thus dying himself and a temporary ban. Death needs to be painful and costly for the player. So noncooperation is a gamble to wether it will pay off or not, and cooperation is rewarded by higher chance of survival as outlined by the op... There is still a reward for bandits who are highly skilled at what they do.

Edited August 8, 2012 by RoastLamb

[Dalegor Dobrutro 22]

Such system is just usuless with time bans. This game is hell to easy to die, one shoot from sniper rifle and you dead. Dont make this game to hard realism, game must be playable something relaxing after hard day. Not some second job, people have enought problems in real life. :P

Edited August 8, 2012 by Dalegor Dobrutro

[gorillahands4 0]

Such system is just usuless with time bans. This game is hell to easy to die, one shoot from sniper rifle and you dead. Dont make this game to hard realism, game must be playable something relaxing after hard day. Not some second job, people have enought problems in real life. :P

I agree, most bandits (especially snipers) that know they have the kill shot are going to take it anyways. A timeout system after death wouldn't discourage PKing, it might even be an incentive for people looking to troll.

@OP love the post and would love to see the game move in that direction. I'm really enjoying this game, but the only element that I'm truly trying to survive is other players. The world itself doesn't really present any real problems. Ramp up the difficult of the environment, make it much more difficult to raid cities, military bases, and even towns and I think you will get a more engaging/immersive experience.

[ptk (DayZ) 178]

My Major Issue with this comment is the fact that DayZ isn't a mod for casual gamers, you have to put in some work and time to get everything, even in this moment in time, some players can run up and grab some mid level guns quickly, but lose them in just the same time. DayZ being a simulator as it is, is meant to be as engaging as possible, casual gamers are playing to get through an hour or 2 out of a day without being bored, more hardcore players play to feel the experience of surviving, bettering your fellow man, being the best at what you do. "HellZ" As you described it, would make being great at this mod, much harder to do alone, and therefore more fun for those who enjoy a challenge, Such as I am.

I don't think developers are going to want to punish the "casual gamers" that make up a large sales base.

But I do like what the OP is getting at, the enviroment needs to be harsher yet still managable so a lone sole can survive. A couple of things to add to the OP if he wants but:

Loot- Say the hive set loot per character with like a 24 hour cycle, meaning that no matter where you hop to or whatever you do once you loot a spot its null to you again for 24 hours. However, seeing as how loot becomes more scarce your chances of finding better or larger loot piles increase when you are with more people (say it links to the players via a group up button). Think sorta like a small multiplier for better and larger piles.

EXP- Not sure if anything of this sort will be implemented, as I really don't like the leveling up thing but say you gain experience for each 24 hours of game time you accumulate, perhaps being in a group multiplies this amount? EXP could apply hidden percentages for certain statistics that the player would never know about (say reduction to a chance of infection or can starve longer etc...)

Or perhaps something like a sanity meter much the same as starvation or thirst. The idea behind not having any human contact for an extended time would lead to delusions, talking to oneself- things of that nature. It is fairly realistic as solitary confiment has the ability to drive one to insanity (unless I'm proven wrong but i think this is correct, not sure to what exent though). For a lonewolf, this is something you would just have to deal with, just as you would in the real world. Solitude can be the best freedom or the worst nightmare! Obviously, this sanity meter would deteriorate at a much slower rate than thirst and starvation. So perhaps some contact would be needed in Dayz, maybe the player recovers at the same rate as it deteriorates? It's much harder to kill someone you become familiar with after a week or so grouping up, when you start to get to know them, rather than for ten seconds, where they have a fat back pack and shiny weapon!

Overal,l OP I like what you've written and hope some of it (especially more zombies and roaming zombies) gets implemented!

P.S does anyone else find it unusual that everyone starts off with nothing? I'm not saying we should be full equipped at the jump, but maybe a random chance to have a few extra small things in life, perhaps based on how long your last character survived?

Edited August 9, 2012 by ptk

[koze 113]

if u make it too realistic, it wont be fun.

[bazbake 456]

The Glitch mistakenly acts like the bandits and survivors are on different sides.

This isn't true. There are no sides. There are just people who kill other players to take their stuff and people who don't kill people to take their stuff. There doesn't need to be any "balance" between the two groups because they're not at war. There are just people who are threats and people who aren't.

It would be easier if they could prevent bandits from swapping their names and faces so that everyone else could retaliate against them without them disconnecting and then changing into a completely different person. But the game won't let you do that.

Bandit IDs are the next best thing to keep them from metagaming themselves out of danger, so situation resolved.

[CRICH1128 1]

People need an incentive not to be a **** and kill anyone they see, Perhaps a Karma mechanic so they paint a target over their head or their more prone to being torn to pieces by walkers. OR if your help others and donate items, you should receive rewards. Or even NON-PVP servers for people who want to work together and are tired of being murdered by ass**** bandits. Perhaps add a new class, Bandit-Survivor-Soldier? I dunno, i'm personally tired of getting shot before I can type "Friendly" by randoms.

[muniek85 6]

Yep, the more depth the better :) And having deathmatch is so immersion braking (setting foot in this game for the first time is a shock of how great athmoshpere this game have, getting shot or axe in the head while trying to loose chasing zombies is a shock in other direction - immersion vanishes imediately), it deserves a revamp for sure.

[Jaoai 16]

I only read the first post, this has some really good dynamic suggestions for solutions to the murder problem which makes this game pretty boring in the long run.

Like it!

[Nataniel 0]

(...)

GREAT ideas. Yesterday me and my friends were playing on the private server with more zombies. It was really intense, zeds were not just an obstacle, we've learned to crawl again, instead of simply running and losing zeds in buildings. MORE zeds, MORE coop, MORE terror.

[Lillo 22]

I really like these suggestions, Time Glitch. You're a genius.

I couldn't have written better ideas, Rocket must see this post.

I was wondering, If you have some freetime you can check my topic (link in my signature) and then tell me what you think (even bad feedbacks).

It's just a topic with fewer ideas than yours, but I would like to know your opinions.

[edgaroviz 21]

I like the idea, but it need some refining.

[ptk (DayZ) 178]

The Glitch mistakenly acts like the bandits and survivors are on different sides.

This isn't true. There are no sides. There are just people who kill other players to take their stuff and people who don't kill people to take their stuff. There doesn't need to be any "balance" between the two groups because they're not at war. There are just people who are threats and people who aren't.

It would be easier if they could prevent bandits from swapping their names and faces so that everyone else could retaliate against them without them disconnecting and then changing into a completely different person. But the game won't let you do that.

Bandit IDs are the next best thing to keep them from metagaming themselves out of danger, so situation resolved.

sorry man, but a simple id isn't a complete solution. there is sinply no incentive to being goid hearted in this game. the time vs reward proportion heavily favors pvp seeing as one could just run in town, find a gun, and kill someone in less than 20 mins (conservative time frame here) and let's say this player dies twice before that while trying to find a weapon or good spawn (ten mins each). that is still 40 mins to gaffle someone who spent 2-3 hours sneaking around and scavenging and who was actually more resourceful than this player because he hasn't died. do you even become a bandit after one kill?

there is really no trade off at the moment. might as well find an axe and run around sniper hill north of elektro. if you die you lose ten minutes of game time, though if you're lucky, you gain alot of hours!

[zombiejun 13]

many of these are good ideas, adjustments are definitely needed, but it will bring more teaming up into the game :)

[BUTLER (DayZ) 4]

[ "Where you're thinking" ] ---> "Where you should think"

People only think about the loot. Killing people for their food, drink or items. What if we got abilites aswell. If you need blood, you need to find a medic or something like that?

[Carebear Baddie 47]

All my beans are belong to you OP.

[chhopsky 25]

Re-read the OP again. Replying again for utter agreement. Bring on living hell!

[OW22 21]

I think it comes to notice that if you had some sort of NPC, you would not need to log on with a group. Dogs are being worked on, and maybe human NPCs should be too. It's just a thought. Don't bite my head off.

[whatbadguy 21]

What?.. what are you doing all the way down here?...

[Nemmyz 4]

No need to make the game too hard. There's some things that I agree with.

But the real solution to this problem is to fix the damn zombies...they are way too glitchy. They should be able to hit you randomly when you're running away from them.

[Dimes123 60]

more of more powerful zombies, less ammo, less technology, and animals that want to kill you in the woods... all im saying.

[Beastbow 0]

i fully support this, it would make the game much better, and more meaningfull to help others, i'm no saint myself and will shoot if you have a gun, but will never leave a newspawn without helping them, but this makes much more sense, who says he's hostile with a gun? maybe he needs help?

Buuuuuuuttt maybe we should also then think about enabling/disabling this? (e.g normal/hard servers), for this might be fun for the experienced players, and those who played alpha/beta, but someone who is still fresh and new to the game won't live long enough to learn how to open their backpacks. (yes ofcourse this could be fixed by a tutorial ect, but be honest, who plays those?) or maybe something that status effects like heatstroke/dissease and whatever DO NOT occur within 30minutes of spawning?

[Spycrab 5]

This is great.

I can think of a great, if not, amazing thing that could happen.

You see somebody, he's got good loot and a broken leg.

He can't mend it, but you can. You've got the shot, but will you take it?

Your arm was broke once, you mended it yourself. That was luck the first time, but will luck be there for you again?

Maybe you can use morphine, but you were addicted once to it. You kicked it, thanks to your teammates and items. But now, most of them are gone, and the sights were driving you mad.

Addiction can happen, will you kick it on your own?

That man's life is in your hands. Take the loot, or the teammate?

That would be the most epic thing ever. That kind of thing, is why i think we need the challange.

[TheJackal_112 3]

I am all for it - I think Dean Hall already mentioned how he wanted to make the game harder to survive in - for example people getting colder alot easier than at present

Keen on the concept of more zombies and in packs as well. Injuries being more problematic is a sound move aswell as opposed to the magic fix that you can get at the moment for broken bones and so forth