Has a lack of UI actually decreased immersion in DayZ?

[scriptfactory 620]

When it comes to things like "AKs have no firing mode selection because we decline to show what firing modes you're set to" or "your 3D compass is clumsy to use and inferior to the 2D ones in previous Bohemia games" then yes.

But 3PP and nametags... ech.

 

I believe I understand what you are saying but if they want to make this game truly realistic then an extreme amount of work needs to be done on the user interface. I did re-read the last status report and saw something about group identification. I am extremely interested to see what the game design team comes up with but I am not holding my breath for something awesome. I would like it if they came up with ideas and posted them in the new dev forums for our feedback. It isn't necessary, of course... just a "nice to have".

I quickly came up with a few simple (easily implementable) and complex ideas. Pardon any typos.

• Spatial awareness (complex): 3PP-mode shouldn't even be necessary in a shooter anymore. We have been peeking in games that are much more competitive for over a decade now. We should be able to press a button to hide behind a rock/tree or beside a wall. We should be able to press another button to actually peek around corners or over the top of obstacles.
• Spatial awareness (simple): 3PP-mode is the easiest way to implement spatial awareness which is why I believe it is still in the game.
• Player identification (complex): In a game like DayZ recognizing other players is very important. It should be possible to discern friendlies from non-friendlies. I should be able to recognize a friend that is standing 1 meter in front of me. More customization options aren't enough. There needs to be some clear method of identification. It is the year 2015. I should, at the very least, be able to model my face, customize my body and change my gait.
• Player identification (simple): Add shake hands with players to see their names and become friends. Wave (F1) at nearby players to see message "You wave at <friend's name> and <other nearby friend's name>."
• Group identification (complex): Clothing should be customizable. I should be able to put large patches on backpacks or clothing. I should be able to tie bandannas to different parts of my avatar and my weapons.
• Group identification (simple): Hex markers for your faction.
• Player and group identification (simple, alternate): Crappy name tags after waving.
• Weapon firing mode (complex): Actually change the weapon firing mode using the real selector on weapons. Add a button to look directly at the firing selector.
• Weapon firing mode (simple): Show the firing mode as a status message when switching.
• Magazine capacity check (complex): Hold reload button to activate animation that pulls out mag and looks at the side of it. Add semi-realistic status indicator to all mags.
• Mag. cap. check (simple): Hold reload button to add text message that shows how many bullets are left in your mag.
• Compass (simple): Equip compass like in Arma 3. Hold K to look at compass. Done. This shouldn't even be talked about. Opening and closing the compass is useless. Why was developer time wasted implementing this?
• Health (complex): Speed should be directly relative to health status. Also, as you lose health, you should slow down. You should also start gasping for air. Screen should fade as more health is lost.
• Blood (complex): Blood splatter proportional to amount of blood loss. This should show on clothing (so your teammates can see how fucked up you are) as well as in an overlay (so you can tell for yourself). Screen should fade as more blood is lost.
• Dehydration (complex): Increased heartrate. Simulate dizziness through post-processing effects. Aural indicators should be coughing or smacking your lips.
• Injury (complex): Show it. If you have a broken leg you should be able to look down and see the bone sticking out of your leg. You shouldn't be able to walk.
• Disease/sickness (complex): You should puke and sweat should run down your screen in an overlay.
• Hypothermia (complex): Frost proportional to your freezing status should appear on the top of your screen overlay. Appropriate shivering aural indicators should also be added.
• Hyperthermia (complex): Vomiting, sweating overlay and dizziness. Sweating overlay should also be used as with sickness.
• Health, blood, dehydration, disease, hypothermia, hyperthermia (simple): Icons that appear when holding a specific button. Pink indicates healthy. Sickly green indicates unhealthy. Blue indicates hypothermia. Glowing red indicates hyperthermia. Pulse to indicate rate of status increase or decline.

 

This is what I meant by user interface. I don't want or need perfect systems now. I would just like something so I'm not just guessing about in-game information. Animations and awesome post-processing effects and overlays can be added later, in my opinion. Or we can just stick with healing, energized, hydrated, stuffed, healthy, cold, moist.

 

I don't want to appear entitled or whatever. I would just like to see some UI love.

[B4GEL 175]

It's not hard to identify anyone.  The problem is that everyone chooses to run soldier mode and have the exact same gear.  Every video I see of clans showing off how leet they are has shows them wearing same vests, same backpacks, same M4's, same helmets, same jackets and same pants.   There is so much variety of clothing to wear but again, people choose to play as the same character as everyone else.

Good point.

They could add lots more tacticool military clothing so that it s not just people in Gorka or TTSKO although that could just as well exacerbate the problem. They could drastically reduce the amount of military clothing spawning but then the airbases will have nothing in them. I quite like the idea of diluting the military clothing spawns with camo that doesn't suit the environment like desert and snow camo, so hardly anyone can get a fully matching suit and clans end up looking like this or even this.

[rickyriot 1009]

You want complete immersion OP? Remove 3PP and see how many people complain about it.

[scriptfactory 620]

This is the running before we can walk scenario here. The UI and the interaction with your character are still in very early stages of development. In the mod you had the ability to know how loud you were being and how visible you were, along with your characters health status.

 

This is my point. New features are being added without a thought as to how this information should be communicated to the user. To me user interface doesn't mean health bars and ammo count. User interface means the way and methods that me and my game communicate with each other. It should be as simple and intuitive as possible, in my opinion.

 

You want complete immersion OP? Remove 3PP and see how many people complain about it.

 

If the devs significantly increased FPS, improved the game's user interface and decreased the horrible desync that is plaguing the game currently I think there would be fewer complaints than you realize. DayZ is the only FPS that makes me feel motion sick. And I am sure I am not alone.

Edited January 11, 2015 by scriptfactory

[rickyriot 1009]

This is my point. New features are being added without a thought as to how this information should be communicated to the user. To me user interface doesn't mean health bars and ammo count. User interface means the way and methods that me and my game communicate with each other. It should be as simple and intuitive as possible, in my opinion.

 

If you are asking for the mod UI to return, and as you quoted that specific bit of my post, then I completely and utterly disagree.

[scriptfactory 620]

I don't want the mod UI to return. I want something like this. It doesn't have to be anything that I wrote but it should be effective at communicating to me what my avatar is experiencing in-game.

[rickyriot 1009]

I don't want the mod UI to return. I want something like this. It doesn't have to be anything that I wrote but it should be effective at communicating to me what my avatar is experiencing in-game.

 

What you wrote is "moon on a stick" stuff. Stuff that goes above and beyond what any game on any platform currently offers. 

We don't disagree on the fact that immersion needs to be subtle and intuitive, and some of that post is sensible, but having name tags hovering over a player is probably one of the most unrealistic things you could add. Extra customisation is a fair call, but group tagging? Just no. You want realism then claim that to look at your compass you have a keybind to an overlay, how is that more realistic or immersive than physically looking at a compass in your hand? You want graphic overlays for health status. How is that more immersive than physically using a thermometer?

 

Some of your requests while claiming to wish for something more immersive seem to point to the opposite.

 

I've already alluded to the fact that it's always going to be difficult to replicate virtual events into the real world, there is going to have to be give and take on that matter, but I am definitely in the camp that you should not be spoonfed all your information and that it takes experience to realise what is going on.

[Killawife 599]

If you're dead, you're dead. Who cares who did it? The only one you should be upset with is yourself for putting yourself in a position to get killed in the first place.

 Yeah, I have only myself to blame for playing a game that randomly kills me.

 

 And I still want to know who did it, why and what shoes he's wearing.

[sachad 1016]

 Yeah, I have only myself to blame for playing a game that randomly kills me.

 

 And I still want to know who did it, why and what shoes he's wearing.

 

Barring the exceptional glitch or hacker, you don't die randomly. If someone legit kills you, that's on you. Turning a corner anywhere can put you in someone's line of sight. And if you get a bullet to the brain, that's it. You're dead. No killcam, no kill message. Just darkness.

[Bororm 1156]

Pretty sure they've already said they are going to do a lot in terms of indicators for various status effects etc.  Stomach growling, that sorta thing.  Everything currently is place holder until they get that system in.

 

So I think we'll see a lot more in that direction but it's just not a priority yet.

 

Floating tags and stuff is exactly the opposite of what they should be doing though.  If anything, we could probably use less UI.

[nexventor 429]

 

First off OP, well done for putting effort into this. Most people just have a generic bitch without going into detail about why and how they would fix it.

 

Now for your points...

 

• Spatial awareness (complex): 3PP-mode shouldn't even be necessary in a shooter anymore. We have been peeking in games that are much more competitive for over a decade now. We should be able to press a button to hide behind a rock/tree or beside a wall. We should be able to press another button to actually peek around corners or over the top of obstacles.

While I completely and utterly agree, it won't change. The dev's have said emphatically that they will not be removing 3PP so there is really no point discussing it. I hate this more than you do.

 

• Spatial awareness (simple): 3PP-mode is the easiest way to implement spatial awareness which is why I believe it is still in the game.

As above. Catering to the weakest link.

• Player identification (complex): In a game like DayZ recognizing other players is very important. It should be possible to discern friendlies from non-friendlies. I should be able to recognize a friend that is standing 1 meter in front of me. More customization options aren't enough. There needs to be some clear method of identification. It is the year 2015. I should, at the very least, be able to model my face, customize my body and change my gait.

Completely agree, instead of wasting time making a "Dean" doll, it should have been spent working on the character modification.

• Player identification (simple): Add shake hands with players to see their names and become friends. Wave (F1) at nearby players to see message "You wave at <friend's name> and <other nearby friend's name>."

Meh! Ok but unnecessary. If they implemented I wouldn't complain but I would probably never use it. 

• Group identification (complex): Clothing should be customizable. I should be able to put large patches on backpacks or clothing. I should be able to tie bandannas to different parts of my avatar and my weapons.

Agreed and apparently they are working on this to some degree. We will have to wait and see how in depth it is and how well implemented

• Group identification (simple): Hex markers for your faction.

Sorry dude but no. I am really not sure how you can have a title saying "ruins immersion" and then want to add "Id tags" to fix it. That is a huge immersion killer for me, I hate it in Arma 3, it reminds me of COD. It's like trying to bandage a wound with a hammer.

• Player and group identification (simple, alternate): Crappy name tags after waving.

As above

• Weapon firing mode (complex): Actually change the weapon firing mode using the real selector on weapons. Add a button to look directly at the firing selector.
• Weapon firing mode (simple): Show the firing mode as a status message when switching.
• Magazine capacity check (complex): Hold reload button to activate animation that pulls out mag and looks at the side of it. Add semi-realistic status indicator to all mags.
• Mag. cap. check (simple): Hold reload button to add text message that shows how many bullets are left in your mag.
• Compass (simple): Equip compass like in Arma 3. Hold K to look at compass. Done. This shouldn't even be talked about. Opening and closing the compass is useless. Why was developer time wasted implementing this?
• Health (complex): Speed should be directly relative to health status. Also, as you lose health, you should slow down. You should also start gasping for air. Screen should fade as more health is lost.

Agreed and would welcome all of the above

• Blood (complex): Blood splatter proportional to amount of blood loss. This should show on clothing (so your teammates can see how fucked up you are) as well as in an overlay (so you can tell for yourself). Screen should fade as more blood is lost.

That how it works now albeit poorly.

• Dehydration (complex): Increased heartrate. Simulate dizziness through post-processing effects. Aural indicators should be coughing or smacking your lips.

Maybe?

• Injury (complex): Show it. If you have a broken leg you should be able to look down and see the bone sticking out of your leg. You shouldn't be able to walk.

Totally agree

• Disease/sickness (complex): You should puke and sweat should run down your screen in an overlay.

You do puke! Sweat? Meh! I don't want this to feel like COD with the blood splashes in your eyes when you get shot.

• Hypothermia (complex): Frost proportional to your freezing status should appear on the top of your screen overlay. Appropriate shivering aural indicators should also be added.
• Hyperthermia (complex): Vomiting, sweating overlay and dizziness. Sweating overlay should also be used as with sickness.
• Health, blood, dehydration, disease, hypothermia, hyperthermia (simple): Icons that appear when holding a specific button. Pink indicates healthy. Sickly green indicates unhealthy. Blue indicates hypothermia. Glowing red indicates hyperthermia. Pulse to indicate rate of status increase or decline.

Maybe? Implementation is key.

Edited January 12, 2015 by NexVentor

[scriptfactory 620]

Thanks for your response, Nex.

 

• Group identification (simple): Hex markers for your faction.

Sorry dude but no. I am really not sure how you can have a title saying "ruins immersion" and then want to add "Id tags" to fix it. That is a huge immersion killer for me, I hate it in Arma 3, it reminds me of COD. It's like trying to bandage a wound with a hammer.

• Player and group identification (simple, alternate): Crappy name tags after waving.

As above

 

In my opinion, immersion is not expressly the availability or lack of graphical UI elements, rather my ability to immerse myself in the game world.

 

I see a lot of sentiment expressing a distinct disdain for group and player identification through graphical UI elements. The fact of the matter is, this does not have to be implemented but it would immensely help with player interaction.

 

The lack of any form of player identification is, to me, an extreme breech in reality and one that really prevents the possibility of creating in-game communities without resorting to meta-gaming (giving away my position via Skype, TeamSpeak, etc.) There is absolutely no possibility for faction wars. There is no way to remember un-friendly players as they simply have to change their clothes. There is a whole layer of gameplay that is restricted simply because of the lack of information.

 

Example: Due to the current cheating situation I only play on private shards. I know my community and have actually created social relationships with people in my private community. The problem is, if I am looking at a group of my friends and they change headgear I won't be able to know which friend is which on sight. If I meet a new friend and we spend an entire gaming session together I could log out and not recognize him upon meeting him in a subsequent play session.

So I will present the following questions to you:

 

1. As a configurable server option for private shards would this really harm your gameplay experience? Could you not simply choose another server?
2. If you, as a more hardcore player, were able to turn off these identification tools for yourself (e.g. you could not see the nameplates of others and/or they could not see yours) would your sense of immersion be ruined? You could even play on servers with these features enabled without affecting your personal feeling of immersion.
3. Do you feel it would ruin your gameplay to know others had the advantage of recognizing their friends and enemies but you do not? Is it not possible for allowances to be made for people that simply want to recognize their friends in-game until more in-depth character customization options are added?

 

I am asking these questions genuinely as I am not sure why a middle-ground can't be reached. Some form of player and group identification would make RP servers so much more fun.

[pale1776 375]

Yes. The mod had the best UI. Simple and outta the way.

PLUS, I always know if Im hungry IRL without checking, so the mod was also more realistic because a glimpse of the UI imitated the feel of hunger. Now I gotta stop, push tab, and check. Thats like asking "Am I hungry? Lemme check"

The "innovatice UI that will reduxe clutter"? Excuse me, but heres a sample of my screen UI.

I am extremely hungry

I am cold

I am shaking

I am slowly warming up

I am bleeding

My arm hurts

I am getting wet

I am no longer getting wet

I am hot

I am slowly cooling off

Yeah, all that is TOTALLY less cluttered than the 3 symbols that were in the mod on the right bottom corner that kinda blended in if you werent focused on them.

But that was Rockets idea, and hes gone. Maybe the devs can focus on important things instead of Rocket asking for his face to be a player model and featured on a billboard ingame. :p

[r.pitura@live.com.au 12]

In BI games this is UI editor:

 

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/User_Interface_Editor_%28Arma_2%29

 

So any displays you look at or dialogs you interact with are UI.

 

This includes (but is not limited to) messages, menus, on-screen pictures.

 

HUD is a term misappropriated from the military.

 

If you cannot recognise players, then why not ask for customisable faces or something practical.  Why link to this thesis about on screen UI?  How do you think it is applicable to "player recognition elements"?

 

Your initial post is very vague.  If you are strawman, it is only because you have set yourself up for it using a FPS thesis as basis for your arguments.

This has been addressed before about players faces and it aint going to change.....

It aint going to happen...

[Thadius (DayZ) 40]

Sometimes you have to have a less immersive game for a more fun experience overall. You could force players to go through an animation of taking off their backpack and putting things in/taking things out every time you interact with loot, even when sorting through your inventory. The same with items stored in your clothes.

Immersive? Yes. Annoying and not conducive to fun gameplay for the majority of people? Yes. Some may of course find this amazing, but to the majority, it would be a major hassle.

Immersion has to be balanced.

For example, I would argue that its because of this focus on immersion and "realism" making DayZ SA the hackers paradise it is. Not just bad security.

What do I mean you say?

Well, the game offers us (almost) no way to self-police against hackers and exploiters. We are unable to notify admins via ingame messages, we can't identify possible hackers by name, we can't tell the difference if our knees violently exploded spontaneously in those stairs or if we got hit through a wall, and we are not able to see the names of the group of five guys you witnessed duping all their gear and no way to quickly get an admin on site (via ingame means).

Thus, hackers and exploiters have almost perfect anonymity to commit their acts with negligible consequences because normal players just can't identify them or get admins to respond fast enough.

The above I think is killing the game more then all the phasing zombies, killer stairs or wobbly ladders combined.

Edited January 12, 2015 by Thadius

[Nunk 1]

Modern FPS shooters are not menat to be immersive.  You play them for 10 hours on full auto, infinite ammo and then go buy the next DLC.

WTF does EA or Dice know about immersion.  Trying to be cool i guess.  B)

My son does not play FPS for immersion and does not bother with campaigns.  Its becmoming more "competition gaming" or a sport if you like.

Edited January 12, 2015 by Nunk

[OrLoK 16185]

Hello there

 

Dont forget the UI is far from complete at the moment.

 

Rgds

 

LoK

[scriptfactory 620]

Modern FPS shooters are not menat to be immersive.  You play them for 10 hours on full auto, infinite ammo and then go buy the next DLC.

WTF does EA or Dice know about immersion.  Trying to be cool i guess.  B)

My son does not play FPS for immersion and does not bother with campaigns.  Its becmoming more "competition gaming" or a sport if you like.

Ego-shooters are some of THE most immersive games. Video game immersion is often thought of as a combination of in-game spatial presence and the ability to induce that feeling of "flow". This has been the case since competitive shooters have existed. It is quite easy to lose yourself in them. THAT is immersion.

[jubeidok 495]

The OP comes off as rather pretentious to me. I'm sorry, what AAA FPS are you currently working on? It's cool to have your own ideas, suggestions and your own vision of how you'd like things to be, but you present them in a manner that comes off as: "OMG, I'm such a better designer than these guys!" I'm sorry to call you out like that, OP, as you also seem like someone you can have a mature design discussion with. It's just how I felt reading your posts.

 

In the end, I'm looking forward to the bigger publishers entries into this genre. They most likely wont understand what made DayZ a success and it will be cool to see just how 'gamey' they can make it. 

[scriptfactory 620]

You hurt my heart! You aren't sorry at all... oh, man... I feel horrible. ;)

 

Nah, I just love DayZ and video games in general. Thanks for commenting on the thread, though!

[nexventor 429]

 

Thanks for your response, Nex.

 

My pleasure!

 

In my opinion, immersion is not expressly the availability or lack of graphical UI elements, rather my ability to immerse myself in the game world.

 

My ability to immerse myself in a game comes directly from how realistic said game is. It's the reason I play DayZ, For me as soon as you have an unrealistic UI like player markers my immersion drops dramatically. I play with a track IR and play in first person mode even when playing on 3PP. I think I have one video of 3PP, I hated playing like that, my heart didn't pump, I wasn't anywhere near as fearful and TBH it was rather boring. 

 

I see a lot of sentiment expressing a distinct disdain for group and player identification through graphical UI elements. The fact of the matter is, this does not have to be implemented but it would immensely help with player interaction.

 

Yes it would help people not shooting their friends but is that what you really want? Again it's an immersion killer, I absolutely love the fact I could kill or be killed by my friends by accident, it makes me cautious, calculated and on the edge of my seat whenever I see another player. Friendly fire happens all the time in real world scenarios, why should it not here? It really separates the men from the boys, it gives your team something to work for, something to develop as a team. When my guys first started working together we were hopelessly unorganised and friendly fire would happen often. I have seriously lost count of how many times I have been killed by friends. But most importantly I don't want "HELP", I want it to be difficult. As said previously, if we could use in game player customisation then we wouldn't need artificial intervention.

 

The lack of any form of player identification is, to me, an extreme breech in reality and one that really prevents the possibility of creating in-game communities without resorting to meta-gaming (giving away my position via Skype, TeamSpeak, etc.) There is absolutely no possibility for faction wars. There is no way to remember un-friendly players as they simply have to change their clothes. There is a whole layer of gameplay that is restricted simply because of the lack of information.

 

Example: Due to the current cheating situation I only play on private shards. I know my community and have actually created social relationships with people in my private community. The problem is, if I am looking at a group of my friends and they change headgear I won't be able to know which friend is which on sight. If I meet a new friend and we spend an entire gaming session together I could log out and not recognize him upon meeting him in a subsequent play session.

 

Extreme breach of reality? Hmm, I don't know about that. Most unfriendly players wear masks anyway, so you wouldn't know who they were even if there was customisable faces, you would be right back to square one. Look at the mod there are (were) plenty of communities who do exactly what you want and faction wars have and always will be a MAJOR part of DayZ. They happen now!

 

Re: Your example - My team has a piece of clothing that as soon as we see contacts, we all put on to identify each other. It works flawlessly and since we begun doing it, we have not had one friendly fire incident.

 

At the end of the day, I agree there is a problem however I don't agree on the solution. Sorry dude!

 

So I will present the following questions to you:

 

• As a configurable server option for private shards would this really harm your gameplay experience? Could you not simply choose another server?

 

If it was a server option that would be ok and once mod tools are released I bet there will be servers like this but as I have stated this goes directly against immersion and I highly doubt any 1PP servers would use this as it is a helping hand and goes against the mindset of a "realism" player. 

 

• If you, as a more hardcore player, were able to turn off these identification tools for yourself (e.g. you could not see the nameplates of others and/or they could not see yours) would your sense of immersion be ruined? You could even play on servers with these features enabled without affecting your personal feeling of immersion.

 

I would not play on these servers and if all servers became like this I would not play DayZ again. One of my strategies is to completely flank the enemy and kill them from behind because they think I am one of them. I have used this on numerous occasions and this would be instantly obsolete. It wouldn't ruin my immersion, it would ruin my entire gaming experience. Deception can be more powerful than weapons.

 

• Do you feel it would ruin your gameplay to know others had the advantage of recognizing their friends and enemies but you do not? Is it not possible for allowances to be made for people that simply want to recognize their friends in-game until more in-depth character customization options are added?

 

As above, absolutely would ruin my experience! Also you can recognise your friends now, pick a piece of clothing that very few people wear and this will only get better as they introduce more and more clothing options. In my squad no one is allowed to wear mountain backpacks, payday mask's, gas mask's, and other items I will not go into. The narrow you make this selection the far easier it is to instantly know who is on your team and who is not.

 

A question for you, forget immersion as I don't believe that is the issue, what is happening specifically to you for you to want this? Please state real examples of the issues that have occurred.

[sachad 1016]

The "innovatice UI that will reduxe clutter"? Excuse me, but heres a sample of my screen UI.

I am extremely hungry

I am cold

I am shaking

I am slowly warming up

I am bleeding

My arm hurts

I am getting wet

I am no longer getting wet

I am hot

I am slowly cooling off

 

 

Are you one of three stooges by any chance? You need a helmet, son.

[nexventor 429]

Are you one of three stooges by any chance? You need a helmet, son.

 

Is it just me or should he not be bloody eating something, taking some morphine, starting a fire, wringing his clothes out, and bandaging himself?  

[scriptfactory 620]

I suspect that a lot of players are like you, Nex, in that they simply want to be able to play in their desired playstyle. Renting a server is quite expensive. The availability of more optional UI elements means that there is a chance the majority of server admins will turn on all available server options in a bid to increase their server populations (e.g. 3PP mode).

 

Since the DayZ devs have already started to make a separation between private hives and the public hive with the addition of Hardcore mode. I wonder if they would be willing to add more options for specifically for private shards. This would have the added benefit of pushing more people to private servers effectively fixing server hopping and ghosting but reducing the amount of available servers per character.

 

A question for you, forget immersion as I don't believe that is the issue, what is happening specifically to you for you to want this? Please state real examples of the issues that have occurred.

When I participate in PvP I generally play as a lone wolf and shoot anyone that I see. Target acquisition is of little importance to me.

 

The problems I have with lack of group and player identification are specific to "no KoS"-based private communities. The prosopagnosia issue I mentioned in a previous post is a good example of why I would like to see some form of player/friendly identification. If I meet a player I would like to be able to recognize him apart from his clothing. In addition, faction identification would allow factions wars to exist on RP servers apart from their standard (boring) no KoS rules.

 

Player/friendly identification: The other day I met two really nice guys @ NWA on a private shard. I was going to murder them, as they seemed a bit shady, but didn't. They were actually really cool. We chilled for about 15-20 minutes and I left to go loot the jail up the hill, north of the tents. Upon return I saw two individuals running through the tents. They looked almost exactly like the two guys I met earlier, which is normal since almost everyone runs around in forest ninja gear. I tracked them for a minute or two before realizing that one of them had a different mountain backpack with a different color. In a realistic scenario I would have noticed things like their height/weight/hair color/mannerisms/gait/etc.

 

Player identification: There is a clan of cannibals on the same private shard. I have killed one of them several times. He is a super douche and always attempts to rob people. I would KoS his ass every chance I could get (or avoid him altogether) if I could recognize him. There is no way to recognize him in between play sessions as he simply changes his clothes to find innocent victims.

 

Player/faction identification: There are traders on a different private shard. It is always the same guys. They are faction-neutral, lone wolves. If I actually meet and trade with someone I should be able to recognize them again in the future. Since traders are often murdered this isn't that great of an example since there is usually a "new life rule" on many RP servers. Still, for those RP servers that allow a continuous narrative (through deaths) a way to identify yourself as a trader or have people recognize you as a legitimate trader and not a bandit would be amazing.

 

Faction identification: There are multiple factions on each RP private shard I play on. They each orient themselves towards some common theme; banditry, cannibalism, heroes, medical, trade, generic survival, etc. If there was some way of displaying what faction you were a part of it would allow circumvention of the "no KoS" rule to a certain extent. Heroes would always be allowed to kill bandits and cannibal factions (after target acquisition). Bandits and cannibals could attack known heroes. People would start leaving traders alone or risk being banned.

 

Again, I don't really care what form player and faction identification comes in, I would just like something beyond clothing and voice recognition. I would also like to add that I kinda' got sidetracked and these two topics are the least of my worries in regards to the DayZ user interface. Improved health/status indicators would improve my DayZ experience the most, I guess. I just want to see some general UI love. :)

Edited January 13, 2015 by scriptfactory

[boneboys 7988]

For those that play in a group, I'm interested as to what this may be "non intrusive group identification" !

I've tried getting someone to spill teh  :beans: without success.

Customised hats would be cool :D !

 

Anyhow, try suggesting something.