DayZ needs to continue to have freedom but fully depict a person's mental state.

[1337stealth 0]

This is a repost from a reddit thread.

http://redd.it/vxfln

DayZ has successfully captured the physical aspects of a zombie apocalypse with an environment, persistent gameplay and realistic limits of the human body. Although it has forgotten a major aspect of it, humanity, not a stupid change in character model but your character's emotional state.

Some would hope that the player would have emotional attachment to their actions in game it simply doesn't happen with a player base that has become detached emotionally from games.

Murder needs to stay in DayZ but needs to affect the game character since players have become detached. This came from my idea of wondering how messed up my soldier in Battlefield 3 would be after killing 50 other people. While spec ops forces in real life may be able to kill many people they still have deep emotional consequences, regular soldiers even more. In DayZ our characters are civilians, the soldiers are dead at bases and the spec ops in their helicopters.

What I am suggesting is a mental health meter that is effected by the amount of zombies (a large amount 50+) and players you've killed, in addition the amount of isolation you have been in. In real life if you're a axe murderer/sniper alone hunting people in the woods, I'd say your pretty messed up.

The effects of being inhuman would be loss of control of your character progressively, perhaps hallucinations and sudden mental breakdowns. I'm not a psychologist but we need a simulation of the human mind.

Your mental state would reduce slowly over time if you avoid killing things but thats unacceptable in a zombie apocalypse the fastest way to solve and prevent your mental problems would be human contact. People naturally are drawn together and need each other. The mental consequences of being alone, player and zombie killings would be reduced with larger amount of players you're in proximity to. A group of two players wouldn't be able to handle much but adding more would creates near immunity to mental effects. You would be still crazy if you killed 50 players in a short timespan though. This would stress the need for groups that are a common theme in zombie media like Left 4 Dead and the Walking Dead.

An interesting effect would be the adoption of a player in poor mental health since he could accidentally discharge a weapon or lose control in a firefight. This would create a liability and further consequence to being mentally unstable.

In conclusion this would force people to cooperate and force PvP ideally into more group vs group fighting. You could still go solo and murder a few players but you risk going back to your group as a liability with decreased player control. Since players don't feel hunger or thirst to DayZ, Rocket made the character have those effects. Since players have shown little remorse to murder and mass zombie killings (they were people once) we need to force the character to have consequences.

[maxim_malcon@yahoo.com 0]

A feature similar to this already exists, it's the karma system, and it's not finished yet.

Maybe they'll add more punishing effects to the bandits so they think twice before taking a shot.

Marking bandits would be the ideal solution, because at first, they are the hunters, after they get marked, they are the ones being hunted.

Such as bandit skins or heart beating effects when someone points the crossairs at him. However the karma system isn't accurate as it stands now, for even in self defense, you might get marked as a murderer.

I do agree some of the points you have mentioned, about players stop taking this game seriously, and for the most part, it's just shits and giggles to shoot other players on sight and steal their crap.

However, I do not agree on "everything you kill has a mental effect on your character", that's a bit extreme, killing zombies should be fine, killing the "mentally unstable" aka, bandits, should also not have any mental effects to your character, because you are only protecting yourself.

As it stands, only survivors are punished by playing "friendly", while the bandits get to walk around and take advantage of these friendly players until eventually all of these friendly players turn into bandits as well.

[1337stealth 0]

I think the zombie killing should have an effect but at a high number. Over 150 zombie kills should have the same effect as one player kill.

They are monsters but they were people, this topic was obviously addressed in the Walking Dead comics and TV show with the solution being to kill the zombies but with some moral consequences.

[Failbait 60]

These effects should be instituted PLAYER side. It's up to YOU.

As in, I question myself and feel regret when I kill another person in the game.

The dilemma is this:

I don't need a game to simulate my humanity, empathy

But others use this game to simulate their sociopathy.