Crafting for better Friend or Foe identification

[Deisu 3]

I was reading in dev logs that custom leather crafting for clothing was going to be introduced and an idea struck me. Friend or Foe Identification is REALLY hard in DayZ. I'm not talking about the issue with KoS here. I'm talking about when you're operating with a group of buddies and you want to not shoot all your friends.

See, glorious DayZ has a big problem: SAME-FACE. Everyone looks the same, everyone moves the same, everyone has access to a limited spread of exactly the same clothing and skin tones. You could, of course, run around as a group of women, or black men. My teams have done this before, when the berets first came out I had a group of buddies just getting into it and we all wore Commie hats to improve FoF, everyone else was KoS but we paused and confirmed for black berets. This drastically improved things for us, but we ran into the occasional guy who killed one or two of us because he was wearing the same hat too. Thats the real problem; any schmuck could be wearing what your team is wearing and that's the only way to tell one another apart.

 

In real life your squaddies have different faces, different heights and statures, different body langauges. They make sounds you're familiar with, movements you know, things of that nature. I wanted to add my idea to the pile on solving this problem for DayZ and for expanding the idea of Squads/Clans/Groups and teams. Especially with farming and bases in the future.
 

 

1. Custom pattern shirts/colors
2. Armbands
3. Flags

4. Symbols

 

1. Custom patterns and colors for shirts

 

What I'm talking about here is the capacity to dye a shirt or jacket with a particular pattern. Say you get some dyes together, and maybe a pattern item and now you can construct a shirt with a pattern and different colors. Patterns would be things like Stripes, chevrons, plaid. circles ect. Colors would be say a base color, and between 1 and 3 colors for the shapes in the pattern. With this you could craft unique patterns used by your group. My team might all wear red shirts, with brown and black stripes. as an example.

2. Armbands

 

Why not armbands that can be found or dyed in different identifiable colors? Yellow, blue, red, ect. I know this presents the same problem that I'm attempting to solve. But this kind of item could be quite handy anyway because it adds another layer of complexity to 'team color combos'.

 

3. Flags

 

Alright with bases as an option in the far future; plantable flags seem a must. But more than that....what if we could put together medieval style flags for troops identification. Maybe I want my group of guys to run around with our custom flag fluttering from a stick on their back. Craft it with sticks and cloth, some dyes and idea number 4 and BAMO-LAMMO; easy to see and identify friendlies...perhaps a little too easy so try not to get shot.

 

4. Symbols

This idea plays off the future leatherworking plan and is at its core the whole inspiriation for everything I've said. Why not allow us to make a set number of shapes out of leather (dyed different colors), combine these in a kind of freeform way (ala CoD) to make symbols. these items can be then "flattened" once the relative possition of each item is set and made into a single "symbol" item. This item would have to be manually reproduced each time of course, but could be applied to some items such as the front/back of shirts/jackets and flags.



Those are my rough sketch ideas. I freely admit I have no notion of how much work or restriction would be required on implimentation but I wanted to throw it down.

Now one problem with this whole idea, of course, is that people could mimick your set of symbols and shirt patterns and clothing styles. Absolutely they could; the difference is that by adding this level of depth to the number of datapoints in an individualized uniform it is much much much harder for someone to do this by pure accident. It becomes a intentional and malicious act to mimic someone else's pattern. DayZ and malicious acts go together like bread and butter, and what are clans without treachery and spies! so this is fine. But it takes out a lot of the guess work on "wait is that Joe wearing the brown pants and TTSKO jacket with the SKS or is that a possible enemy?!"

Thank you for your time, I hope i have not wasted it.

[miki_grom 69]

Great idea,but i don't think they will add this any time soon  :|  :beans:

[Cpanther 221]

Is already in the roadmap..but i don't think it will happen until Beta. Which is weird...it can't be harder to do than making a new hat, or a weapon...I think Dean wants to run away before that happens...

[liquidcactus 719]

Dev tracker just announced arm bands today.. 

 

My idea is this - The result of torn clothes = rags.. the colour of the clothing should correspond to the colour of the rag *SHAZAM* you have arm bands. 

[Arthur Dubrovka 376]

I think for shure it´s easier to identify your mates if they wear signs, but armbands? Common, selfmade friendship armbands thats not good. Maybe it should be possible to take a peace of paper, a knife cut symbol and take it as blueprint to spray a sign on your helmet or your shirt. thats ok for me, but Armbands, I don´t like it.

For me the whole identification thing with your teammates at a gunfight makes it more difficult to operate efficient and there where epic moments i wont miss without identification symbols.