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This is a Video Game. It'll Never Be 100% Realistic. Bandit and Sheriff Skins

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This is a game, not real life. We can theory craft all day about how realistic or unrealistic it is to kill someone. In a post-apocalyptic world, it is hard to say exactly how we will behave. We can postulate, but in the end, no one really knows because it's never happened before.

That being said, this is a video game. People are arguing back and forth about what to do about bandits and the senseless killing. Let's stop trying to use "realism" for arguing this point because in a video game you will never have 100% realism.

In the end, we as the community need to decide what kind of game we want. Do you want a game where it is a frag fest and you KoS any player you see? Or do you want a game where every encounter with a player is unique and you have to consider if you should kill them or not.

I submit to you that most of us would prefer the latter as it is much more unique and interesting that sets DayZ apart. I enjoy PK'ing. I think it is essential and should stay, however it needs to be changed so it is more meaningful.

How do we do that? (Take a deep breath because here comes the flame train) Bring back bandit skins. Bandit skins ultimately help reduce the KoS problem because we will visually know who is 100% sure a KoS target. A survivor skin? May or may not be a threat, but I sure as shit know that the bandit is a KoS threat.

Yes. Bandit skins are bugged. Fix the bandit skin system so it takes into account who shoots first. Fix it so you can defend your friends and not get flagged for being a bandit. Fix it so that if you kill a bandit, it will shift you away from being a bandit. Rocket is a genius and can overcome some simple hurdles of how to fix the programming for the bandit skin system.

Give an anti-bandit skin too: Sheriff skins. Want to kill people and enjoy the thrill of hunting the world's most cunning prey, a human? Give an incentive for killing bandits and adding them to your collection. Reach a sheriff skin and it'll also help communicate the survivors that you are friendly and can help protect. On top of that, it'll give bandits a little more sport to know they killed someone else who is a successful PK.

In the end, this is a game and we need to decide on what type of gameplay we want. If it turns into a CoD frag fest, I think alot of us will leave to go play a game that does frag festing better.

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This is a game' date=' not real life. We can theory craft all day about how realistic or unrealistic it is to kill someone. In a post-apocalyptic world, it is hard to say exactly how we will behave. We can postulate, but in the end, no one really knows because it's never happened before.

[/quote']

I'm sure people who died during the 1994 LA riots or the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina [or you know, any catastrophe, man or nature-made, ever] totally agree with you about how people are totally civil after the breakdown of law an order.

I think the thesis of this game is that troubled conscience is a luxury problem.

So a resounding "No, thank you!" to your suggestion from me.

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I'm for the most part a KoS player myself, unless someone notices me and specifcally says "Hey you over there! Im friendly!" i will not hesitate to kill them. That being said, im not sure enforcing these skins would be the right idea, but i do know that many people are proud to be a bandit or proud to be a survivor, so maybe instead of forcing the skin when u meet a certain threshold you can choose wether or not to be displayed as a bandit, this in itself would not change the game quite as much as the op's suggestion but what it would do is allow for people who are generally nice to communicate that with others and vice versa.

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DayZ is a game where every encounter with a player is unique and you have to consider if you should kill them or not.

But I'm OP' date=' I'm a fag and I can't handle that sometimes my shitty lack of situational awareness lets better players - who want nothing to do with such a faggot nub - kill the fuck out of me, so let's gay the game up with OP brand buttsecks[/quote']

No thanks

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I've yet to read this' date=' but based on the title. I'd like to say: the game is based on authenticity not realism.

[/quote']

^^ This

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Suggestions like these would completely remove the suspense when you see another survivor. Where you have to decide whether to go up and talk to them, shoot them, or just leave them alone and hope they don't notice you.

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This is a game' date=' not real life. We can theory craft all day about how realistic or unrealistic it is to kill someone. In a post-apocalyptic world, it is hard to say exactly how we will behave. We can postulate, but in the end, no one really knows because it's never happened before.

[/quote']

I'm sure people who died during the 1994 LA riots or the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina [or you know, any catastrophe, man or nature-made, ever] totally agree with you about how people are totally civil after the breakdown of law an order.

I think the thesis of this game is that troubled conscience is a luxury problem.

So a resounding "No, thank you!" to your suggestion from me.

Yeah let's go ask those zombies how they can run for so long too.

oh wait, they don't exist.

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"...Or do you want a game where every encounter with a player is unique and you have to consider if you should kill them or not."

....that is exactly the game we currently have. people need to stop bitching about being killed, if you're that bothered about it then just don't trust random people. it seems like the majority of people who have a issue with this are just people who rage out when they get killed, get over it. i have given people bandages, transfusions and received thanks in the form of a .45 in the back of my skull...yeah it annoyed me but whatever? makes the game a lot more interesting. the bandit/sheriff skin doesnt really work as well as the new feature - for example, i AM a friendly player and try and join up with people if possible, but using the skin system like you said just creates the shoot on sight situation that you are complaining about??

-1


But I'm OP' date=' I'm a fag and I can't handle that sometimes my shitty lack of situational awareness lets better players - who want nothing to do with such a faggot nub - kill the fuck out of me, so let's gay the game up with OP brand buttsecks[/quote']

No thanks

hahahahaha well said. +1 to that comment:D

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Even though it wasnt "realistic" i enjoyed the bandit skins and a sheriff skin does sound cool. The problem being that Rocket doesnt want to penalise any style of play - why shouldnt a bandit look just like any other survivor?

I like the idea of finding many more skins, and having a choice whether to wear it or not.

I do like the idea in a game point of view, but i just cant see it happening.

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Where do people get the misconception that CHAOS broke out after Hurricane Katrina? The area struck by the storm had some 3 to 5 million residents depending on how the area is defined. The number of those who committed crimes; particularly murder; was in the hundreds at most.

You people need to become more discerning media consumers...a lot of what you saw on TV was hype for ratings.

In any case, the situation is not comparable. EVERYONE in the Katrina storm area knew that law and order would soon return. It might take awhile...but any brazen lawlessness would eventually be punished.

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Hi Kraytos, I like the intent of the post, but I'm not sure I agree with it.

Regarding the Bandit skins & your idea of Cop skins: I personally LIKE the Humanity metre, But applying it to change the physical appearance of the player was not a proper choice. Good to learn from in testing though.

but I think your suggestion doesn't solve the overarching issue of Excessive PKing.

If player skins get morphed between Bandit (Low Humanity) and Cop (high Humanity), then that sticks players with two available character skins, Because I don't see how picking up Skins and Morphing skins are going to work hand in hand without the server having a hernia when all fifty players are shifting skins and adding skins at the same time, If I pick up a ghillie suit as a cop, will my sheriffs hat cut through the mesh or does it replace the mesh? If I pick up Civ clothes am I a sheriff in disguise or does the humanity skin take precedence?

If a Player reaches Sheriff level, what is to stop him from turning on players looking for help? I mean sure his humanity does go down a little but that's easy to build back up if you are a sheriff and people trust you on sight enough to run to you for healing and give blood packs, because doing those actions to another player raises your humanity, So I can just see epic level trolling prevailing in this world.

Add the Bandit skin & the Cop skin as skins you can pick up, because in a World with no rules, a man in uniform means nothing, But that doesn't mean I DONT want the uniform anyway.

And if this truly is an apocalypse, then there are no rules, So it's not right to use game mechanics to punish players for doing what is to be expected in this type of world. (In this case, PKing) Because you still want players to kill other players, otherwise you lose a lot of the ingame fun, you just want to limit it without punishing those players, But likewise, you want the players who are playing the game without pking as the main goal, to be able to do that too. Which is tough because the more players who want to PK, just serve to get survivors angry enough at getting killed, that they start KoS, and then they start killing players indiscriminately. and here we are.

i feel like the main problem of EXCESSIVE PKing stems from:

- Weapons being the largest commodity in the game. It was bound to happen and that comes from modding a military sim.

- The Gun mechanics work near perfectly already, while the rest of the world is still under construction. whatcha gonna do with your time if you have a buttload of guns and nothing else to do?

- It still feels like i'm playing a tactical sim, and thats just because the FPS control scheme are copied/adapted from ARMA. My character in this Zombie Apocalypse runs, walks, acts as though he has just spent Five years being Major Payne's bitch, there needs to be Reactive movement, fluid movement, jumping into a forwards roll, or a quick duck left or right because I feel he's too ridged, too strict, too Static for the world. This could be remedied via either varient animations for the player, which are slightly different from Regular ARMA games. Or a variation on controls (Maybe not, maybe just add some more Double Tap actions and animations.) Just something Reactive not Offensive.

-It's Alpha and still had alot that needs to be added.

But like I said, I LIKE the Humanity metre, but feel it could be reworked into something better. Like changing your characters mental perception of the world. Sociopath (Negative) - Apathetic (Neutral/Midway) - Social (Positive)

I mean, Imagine if the humanity meter effected how your character sees the world as opposed to changing physical appearance? Because the world has gotta look like a dark, brooding, unloving, paranoia inducing place when you're alone and killing both the Walking Dead and the Living.

And on the flip side, The world isn't such a horrible place if you're sharing the apocalypse with friends, because it makes you feel not so alone, The darkness isn't so dark, and the colours are more vivid and that maybe, just maybe, there is hope for the world after all. For a life AFTER the Apocalypse.

Or you're just Apathetic, and don't really care one way or another, you're just living.

Damn that's a big wall of text.

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How about this: This game is a simulation, which means realism is of almost highest priority. This game also has a lot of depth in the way you react to things, especially survivor to survivor encounters. The point of taking the bandit skin out was:

a: get rid of a shit tonne of things wrong with the game

b: make meeting a survivor even more special.

you said, "I think [PVP] is essential and should stay, however it needs to be changed so it is more meaningful.". Well, putting the skins back in would ruin the meaningfulness of the encounter part of the game is deciding what kind of person you are and how you deal with meeting other players. Are they good? Are they bad? For example: my friend had a 5 minute conversation with some guy who broke his legs. Unfortunately, my friend had no morphine to help the guy. After my friend told him where he could find morphine, the guy said he was just going to start over, as he didn't want to crawl all the way to the hospital. so my friend said good-bye and turned to make his way back to the forest when the guy shot him in the back of the head. My friend made the wrong decision (and excepts that fully). He didn't once consider the guy's allignment (bandit/neutral) and for this, he payed. The skins take all the thinking and questions out of the game. You just want to be spoon fed the answers.

Also, the mechanics behind the "who shot first" question would be impossible to work out. there are too many contradicting variables.

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No realism is more important.

Just like when I break my leg for opening the door

Just like taking some morphine to fix my leg

Just like the way I switch universes to get away from dieing

It will never be 100% realistic

In my opinion realism < balance (but just my opion)

I support the skins, but there are to many issues involved

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If you're so wrapped up in clothing customization, play TF2. It's free, you get hats, and you're separated into color-coded teams.

I personally like the PvP the way it is. Today, I dropped a shotgun for a stranger because I had 2000 blood and wasn't sure how much longer I was going to make it. That 10 seconds between drop and watching them equip was incredibly tense, and I don't want to lose that tension.

They actually didn't shoot me either, so there's that.

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You people must be getting extremely lucky if you aren't getting killed, i haven't run into ONE person who didnt try to kill me, the game is too biased around PvP and zombies are just there. i don't have any clue how that could be fixed... i just think it lost the suspense aspect to it. you have to pretty much expect to get shot randomly and the fact you spawn with no weapon to defend yourself makes it worse :dodgy:

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OK, we have a new Sheriff skin in town. A shiny new Sheriff skin. Every bandit this side of the Rio Grande will surely want to wear one of these...so what have we really gained here?

EDIT: Read your post again and I see that I was misinterpreting what you are suggesting. Still not a fan but I'll leave it alone.

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This is a game' date=' not real life. We can theory craft all day about how realistic or unrealistic it is to kill someone. In a post-apocalyptic world, it is hard to say exactly how we will behave. We can postulate, but in the end, no one really knows because it's never happened before.

That being said, this is a video game. People are arguing back and forth about what to do about bandits and the senseless killing. Let's stop trying to use "realism" for arguing this point because in a video game you will never have 100% realism.

In the end, we as the community need to decide what kind of game we want. Do you want a game where it is a frag fest and you KoS any player you see? Or do you want a game where every encounter with a player is unique and you have to consider if you should kill them or not.

I submit to you that most of us would prefer the latter as it is much more unique and interesting that sets DayZ apart. I enjoy PK'ing. I think it is essential and should stay, however it needs to be changed so it is more meaningful.

How do we do that? (Take a deep breath because here comes the flame train) Bring back bandit skins. Bandit skins ultimately help reduce the KoS problem because we will visually know who is 100% sure a KoS target. A survivor skin? May or may not be a threat, but I sure as shit know that the bandit is a KoS threat.

Yes. Bandit skins are bugged. Fix the bandit skin system so it takes into account who shoots first. Fix it so you can defend your friends and not get flagged for being a bandit. Fix it so that if you kill a bandit, it will shift you away from being a bandit. Rocket is a genius and can overcome some simple hurdles of how to fix the programming for the bandit skin system.

Give an anti-bandit skin too: Sheriff skins. Want to kill people and enjoy the thrill of hunting the world's most cunning prey, a human? Give an incentive for killing bandits and adding them to your collection. Reach a sheriff skin and it'll also help communicate the survivors that you are friendly and can help protect. On top of that, it'll give bandits a little more sport to know they killed someone else who is a successful PK.

In the end, this is a game and we need to decide on what type of gameplay we want. If it turns into a CoD frag fest, I think alot of us will leave to go play a game that does frag festing better.

[/quote']

but still you wont respawn in a RL apocalypse, so how about allowing only one life per cd key?? realistic enought?

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