Unless we get flags/effects for murder, this game will just be Deathmatch.

[L3iGH 0]

Bandit skins! Bring them back!!

[PinkTaco24 10]

This is your master plan?

Make the exact same post that you made yesterday, that was responded to and completely refuted by myself and a developer on the project?

Don't even bother to change the words around that much?

Just to bump this thread that was on its way to dying again?

Please let it go, man. It's over. Your argument is not getting stronger through repetition and bumping this thread every day with some empty 7-word shitpost is not helping advance the discussion.

The game is not a deathmatch. It's just not. Say it as many times as you want it doesn't become more true. You can write a song about it if you want. Print it on a fucking t-shirt. It was wrong a week ago, it's wrong today, and I promise you it will be wrong this time tomorrow when you show up for your daily dose of bumping this thread with the same hogwash talking points.

Who was the developer on the project?

The game, for me, is a deathmatch. I have had no expierence so far that says otherwise. Call it luck, call it whatever.. That is my play experience so far. And I don't think mine is unique.

I think NOT having a deathmatch experience is unique. So now you have to ask yourself.. what is the GOAL of this game? What is rocket trying to accomplish, and is he meeting that goal?

I don't know if he is or not. But the game IS a deathmatch style game for me as well as majority of other users.

Edited July 12, 2012 by PinkTaco24

[gilatar 0]

I don't understand what people are complaining about.

Firstly, this mod is in alpha. BAD changes WILL be made. GOOD changes WILL also be made. It's not a final product.

Secondly, Rocket has also said that he wants to add more subtle features to the game, like the low-humanity-heartbeat-thing.

[Chicago Zed 2]

I'd only be in favor of something subtle, like maybe bloodstains. Figure if someone murders somebody else and then loots their corpse they'll get some blood on their clothes/hands. Maybe if you murder somebody you should get visible blood on your clothes which would key a survivor that runs into that you quite literally have blood on your hands.

It's not as clearcut as a separate skin, so there will still be that tension when you see somebody, but you'll have a small clue. Just a thought,

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

I don't know if he is or not. But the game IS a deathmatch style game for me as well as majority of other users.

Ahh, there's that word again. "Majority."

Remember when you used it yesterday, and I responded pointing out that only 14.30% of survival attempts have ended in murder? Then Vipeax came into the thread and backed up the stats?

Remember how I pointed out this is lower than it was on 7/7 (15.03%) and it's still falling - Today it's 14.17%.

Any of this ringing a bell at all?

Are you even reading the thread anymore, or do you just pop in once a day to bump it with the same repetitive, ignorant comments?

The game is clearly, demonstrably and as a matter of public record not a death match for the vast, overwhelming majority of players. 86% of survivor deaths are not due to being murdered. That's just it. Your "experience" may be what it is. I would submit to you that if the majority of your deaths are due to murder, then YOU are the problem, not the game or the community.

Clean up your play strategy and stop pretending your personal subjective experiences are shared by most players when we can all see the stats which clearly say otherwise.

And kindly stop bumping this thread after 24+ hours of inactivity if you're not even going to bother reading the intervening posts.

Edited July 12, 2012 by ZedsDeadBaby

[xeaglenec 13]

The great majority of deaths are from people respawning to get closer to location X

[hgilbert@iswest.com 5]

I must have dreamt about the blood parts and how a fixed skin like the bandit one didn't work as people became (permanent) bandits by others shooting at them first and after that none would trust them again and start fire-fights straight away and even sidechat talks didn't stop those.

Vipeax:

George Bernard Shaw said:

"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."

Having read PT's previous entries in this thread, arguing with him is roughly equivalent.

Edited July 12, 2012 by Schmoopie

[Ampoliros 43]

How to end "Deathmatching"

Definition: A Survivor/Bandit will kill you for loot or a survival reason. A PK'er killed you for the point on his debug screen. I don't consider bandits to be the people breaking the spirit of the game, but PK'ers are the server-hopping alt-f4 griefers who want to ruin your experience for a laugh and don't give a shit about your beans.

1) Head North - PK'ers killing you for lawls are on the coast where the easy kills are. North, someone killed you for a survival reason. the only pk'ers in the north will be at the heavy (military) farming zones.

2) Improve Communication - (This needs to be done both in engine and out of it)

3) Organize - A lone bandit won't fire on a column of 5-6 guys. Unless you do something stupid like stand still in a group just the right size for a frag or M203. Or Flare. Or Smoke Grenade. Heck, I'll kill you for doing that, cause I need practice with frags.

4) Retaliate - Just as the best bandit weapon is a good sniper rifle, the best pk weapon is a good sniper rifle, and the best anti-pk weapon is a sniper rifle. Where are you GUARANTEED to find a sniper rifle? The hills and roofs of the big cities. This will work until the PK'ers know that players on that server see them as a nice big fat paycheck and head to a different one. If you have a basic weapon and good sneaking skills then you can get some nice gear before you head north off ONE pk kill.

All the solutions are in game already. If your server is overrun with assholes, kill them, write their name/clan down, and kill all of them everytime you see one. If you don't want them in your game, make sure they know the penalty for murder isn't a different skin, its a bullet in the head.

Edited July 12, 2012 by Ampoliros

[gilatar 0]

I'd only be in favor of something subtle, like maybe bloodstains. Figure if someone murders somebody else and then loots their corpse they'll get some blood on their clothes/hands. Maybe if you murder somebody you should get visible blood on your clothes which would key a survivor that runs into that you quite literally have blood on your hands.

It's not as clearcut as a separate skin, so there will still be that tension when you see somebody, but you'll have a small clue. Just a thought,

YES! I talked to a friend about this a short while ago and the thought slipped away from me. Bloodstains would be both a realistic AND subtle approach to the problem. Wouldn't it be possible to add a loud heartbeat to snipers (or just players who killed a guy from a distance but never looted him/her) to identify the sniper-bandits? I think this sounds like a good idea. Does anyone agree with this?

[jetao2008@hotmail.com 175]

There is absolutely no reason to discourage murder.

You guys are literally trying to kill this game by suggesting things like this.

Sure, at the current state the PvP system is just fine, we probably need Killstreaks added to the game.

5 kills - launch a UAV that spots people for you on your map

10 kills - send a zombie horde after players in a specific direction

20 kills - launch a nuclear strike that kills everyone in Chernarus and after that the line "die carebears" appear on the victim's computer

I think that would be amazing, why even bother to listen to other people's opinions regarding the PvP system?

/Sarcasm :cool:

People who complain are obviously not satisfied with how things are working out, and people who come to raise their swords trying to make things to stay the same are obviously the "internet badass" kind of guys, so please, just listen.

Maybe DayZ is not here to hold your hand, but i doubt it's here to become your everyday FPS game also.

Maybe we can discuss and i promise it will be OK if in the end of the day you guys have different opinions, it's OK. Be cool, guys.

A lot of people are pretty sure that adding PENALTIES to murderers is the solution, i think this wouldn't work, at least in my opinion.

But for being a sandbox game like some people love to remind us here, cooperation is expected, and even if you don't want it, some people do.

Edited July 12, 2012 by Fenrig

[brianeleddy@googlemail.com 1]

Warning, long post. The first problem here is that there is a perception that you are either a bandit or survivor, and everyone seems to self categorize then assume the worst of the other group. Bandit skins did not.and will not make the game better, as at its core a game should be fun and punishing a playtime denies.some people their fun. Currently however to play without ever killing other players is punished, as their is no incentive to cooperate and so the only value you.can assign an unknown player is either a source of loot, or a source of your own death. Thus it is always logical, and any game theory you runn your head tells you, to shoot.on sight.

This actually goes against a simulationist design, as in real life humans clearly cooperated when there was no law, even if such cooperation was the result of fear or coercion rather than affection. As has been stated multiple times, the solution is to incenivise cooperation, which preserves existing gameplay but adds new dimensions for endgame survivors. Rarer exclusively PvP weapons nd ammo would actually improve PvP by reducing the reward for killing those with zombie.killing weapons, but increasing rewards for hunting those who have the same PvP gear.

Harder zombies are an anti fun solution for forcing cooperation, but something such as roaming hoards of military zombies with excellent loot (perhaps a marker zombie that spawns others as it nears players.to reduce server load) would give legitamate threats that bands of.players could be rewarded for teaming up and killing. Things like helI crashes.are.great because they meaningfully reward cooperative PvP behavior, plain survivors need the.same .thing

Just as an aside while it's cool.how.impassioned people are about this.game, it.does nothing to help.one's argument by labelling all bandits as 12 year olds camping Cherno for noobsor people who dislike the current low trust plausible as whining babies that want developers to turn the game into my first left 4 dead. I myself play with mainly real life friends, who.are.all bandits operating in te north, while I have a live and let live policy that means my current life has only two murders and one bandit kill. One.murder was to save the first other player who without knowing anything about me and had the drop on me let e live and started talking, and the other was avenging that random guy's death by eliminating the pair that killed him. I still don't self identify as a banditt, but I enjoy both the PvP and PvE elements of the game, I just wish their was more challenge inthe PvE frobt

[Dr. Toros 8]

If you want to penalize someone for shooting at you, return fire. Don't run crying to the designer and ask him to fight your battles for you. Man up and get it done.

The game is not a "deathmatch." No deathmatch game permits survival for an hour let alone 40 days.

If it feels like a deathmatch to you, it's likely because you're standing in the wrong sorts of places. My suggestion: move.

If it still feels like a deathmatch, keep moving.

We're only in alpha and yet you have every tool at your disposal to create a survivor haven already. Start a clan - advertise the server you are on and the services you provide. Tell people to approach unarmed or face consequences. Dole out medical supplies, food, water and transportation to needy survivors. Defend them against bandits. You can do all of this already, you're just too lazy to do it so you want the designer to come along and build a bunch of unecessary UI and blinking lights and colored buttons and arrows pointing "Go here!"

Well, it's not going to happen.

If you want something to happen, make it happen.

If you want something to stop, put a stop to it.

Stop asking the designer to do your work for you, you lazy, slack-jawed ne'er-do-wells.

I'm really tired of you posting the same shit in every single post you make. It's a tired, terrible arguement that could be seen through by your 85 IQ child. (Unless your wife is a genius, which I highly doubt.)

I'll deal with your empty advice line by line.

"If you want to penalize someone for shooting at you, return fire. Don't run crying to the designer and ask him to fight your battles for you. Man up and get it done."

In a game with sniper rifles and semi-realistic bullet damage, the aggressor is overwhelmingly successful. If the person who shoots first has any skill, they won't reveal themselves until they're assured of the kill. If you have time to fire back, it means the other person was a scrub. Not valuable except against noobie bandits who mostly sit at the coast where their sniper is only up against noobies with maks and loud enfields.

This advice is terrible, stop giving it.

"The game is not a "deathmatch." No deathmatch game permits survival for an hour let alone 40 days."

Classic strawman arguement. No deathmatch game has anywhere near this large a map, and the reason is that it would last just as long. Trite, and worthless point.

"If it feels like a deathmatch to you, it's likely because you're standing in the wrong sorts of places. My suggestion: move.

If it still feels like a deathmatch, keep moving."

Around 80% of the server's best loot is in 3 locations. If you decide you don't need good gear, just food, water, and hunting supplies, your ability to survive is nearly limitless. Stick to worthless areas of the map, and be bored out of your mind, because there is nothing to do if you decide you just want to live. No challenge, just tedium. Why play that game when you can just stare at a wall in real life?

There are two major types of players:

1) Those trying to get end-game loot but haven't learned how to do it effectively yet without getting killed.

2) Those who have gotten end-game loot and now realize they have nothing to do, so they just kill other players for fun.

"We're only in alpha and yet you have every tool at your disposal to create a survivor haven already. Start a clan - advertise the server you are on and the services you provide. Tell people to approach unarmed or face consequences. Dole out medical supplies, food, water and transportation to needy survivors. Defend them against bandits. You can do all of this already, you're just too lazy to do it so you want the designer to come along and build a bunch of unecessary UI and blinking lights and colored buttons and arrows pointing "Go here!""

You can get a group of people together, but you can't actually build a goddamn thing. You can't clear an area of zeds. Tent forests will get looted because there's no one to watch it, and you don't need a tent full of loot for anything except staring at a tree and eating/drinking when an indicator starts blinking.

You can rebuild vehicles, but for what purpose? You can't take a helicopter off the map and escape the infected areas, which would be a win scenario if this was a single player game. There are no islands that have things of value on them, and it's safer just to walk or run everywhere else, and a whole lot less work than fixing a car or a truck. You could make them to have them, but it's an expenditure of time and effort for no real benefit.

"If you want something to happen, make it happen.

If you want something to stop, put a stop to it.

Stop asking the designer to do your work for you, you lazy, slack-jawed ne'er-do-wells."

I want the game to have less mindless PvP. So do members of the community. I pictured a game that was similar to UO in the wilderness, where you had to keep your eye on blues who might turn on you or steal from you, but spontaneous teamwork, which is human nature, would be supported. Day Z artificially punishes the natural tendency to team up by having everyone look exactly the same (no ability to recognize friends vs foes from far off), having NO specialization, removing as much interdependency as possible, and making the only plentiful resource be weapons. It's a game that is far more realistic in encouraging killing others, going out of it's way to make working togather difficult.

The ONLY person with the ability to cause real change in that area is rocket, and he either doesn't know how to, or doesn't want to.

Shooting on sight is the best, easiest, and most rewarding personal strategy. High-tier gear is easy to get to, and there is nothing in this game besides gear acquisition. Player interaction unless you form a clan is overwhelmingly negative, and zombies are ignorable at best and simply irritating at worst.

Individual players can't affect that this game has become a deathmatch on a massive map. Cooperation is a losing strategy because real life aspects of cooperation aren't supported, and nothing of value can be gotten through cooperation. There is no worthwhile endevor that requires multiple people, you can't customize your character at all, so it's really easy to kill allies who can only be found and worked with due to teamspeak/skype, which are external programs.

I, like many other players, have played the game extensively for a few weeks before realizing how incredibly empty it is once you look at a loot map and at the game mechanics.

You're 100% wrong when you say this game isn't a free-for-all deathmatch. The map is bigger and gearing up is more difficult at first because of the learning curve, but that's all it is currently. There's nothing else to do. Survival is easy and boring if you're not trying to get top tier loot. Top tier loot is only useful for either getting more top tier loot and killing players.

This game has potential, which is why I keep an eye on it. But currently with everything mechanically stacked towards deathmatch, that's all it's going to be. Telling people it's not or that they can change it is is either wrong (if you're not smart enough to see it for what it is) or a lie.

Stop Ctrl + V'ing your same terrible advice in every single "this mindless PvP sucks" thread.

Warning, long post. The first problem here is that there is a perception that you are either a bandit or survivor, and everyone seems to self categorize then assume the worst of the other group. Bandit skins did not.and will not make the game better, as at its core a game should be fun and punishing a playtime denies.some people their fun. Currently however to play without ever killing other players is punished, as their is no incentive to cooperate and so the only value you.can assign an unknown player is either a source of loot, or a source of your own death. Thus it is always logical, and any game theory you runn your head tells you, to shoot.on sight.

This actually goes against a simulationist design, as in real life humans clearly cooperated when there was no law, even if such cooperation was the result of fear or coercion rather than affection. As has been stated multiple times, the solution is to incenivise cooperation, which preserves existing gameplay but adds new dimensions for endgame survivors. Rarer exclusively PvP weapons nd ammo would actually improve PvP by reducing the reward for killing those with zombie.killing weapons, but increasing rewards for hunting those who have the same PvP gear.

Harder zombies are an anti fun solution for forcing cooperation, but something such as roaming hoards of military zombies with excellent loot (perhaps a marker zombie that spawns others as it nears players.to reduce server load) would give legitamate threats that bands of.players could be rewarded for teaming up and killing. Things like helI crashes.are.great because they meaningfully reward cooperative PvP behavior, plain survivors need the.same .thing

Just as an aside while it's cool.how.impassioned people are about this.game, it.does nothing to help.one's argument by labelling all bandits as 12 year olds camping Cherno for noobsor people who dislike the current low trust plausible as whining babies that want developers to turn the game into my first left 4 dead. I myself play with mainly real life friends, who.are.all bandits operating in te north, while I have a live and let live policy that means my current life has only two murders and one bandit kill. One.murder was to save the first other player who without knowing anything about me and had the drop on me let e live and started talking, and the other was avenging that random guy's death by eliminating the pair that killed him. I still don't self identify as a banditt, but I enjoy both the PvP and PvE elements of the game, I just wish their was more challenge inthe PvE frobt

You make a lot of really great points here, and I've had many of the same thoughts regarding game theory. Bandit skins were poorly implimented, but that's because dying reset the skin, instead of tying it to the account, like UO did. Death isn't any more meaningful in Day Z than it was in UO, in fact, it's even easier to get high-tier gear.

rocket clearly had no idea how to impliment bandit skins effectively, and because he did so poorly, and then removed them, made things even worse.

For this game to not be a deathmatch, there needs to be

1) Rewarding goals that can only be achieved via cooperation. -Completely missing

2) Character customization so it's easier to tell friend from foe (this is a problem stone age people solved) -Completely missing, and ghillie suits are common enough that it wouldn't matter.

3) More end-game things to do. Zombies are completely static enemies unless they do something surprising due to a bug. Gear can be gotten in an hour. Food and water are plentiful. Vehicles, which take a lot of time to get repaired and fueled, are easy to destroy and don't really provide any benefit other than storage.

Edited July 12, 2012 by Dr. Toros

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

I'm really tired of you posting the same shit in every single post you make. It's a tired, terrible arguement that could be seen through by your 85 IQ child. (Unless your wife is a genius, which I highly doubt.)

Well, there you have it. Always a good sign when a post starts off with a crass ad hominem assault. This does not bode well for the rest of the post, but I'm going to give it a read and careful consideration anyway because that's the sort of bloke I am.

Incidentally, you're right. My wife is not a genius; though, she is quite intelligent, an awesome cook, an incredibly loving mother and isn't above getting a bit freaky after a couple glasses of wine. So, I keep her around despite her faults.

My IQ, on the other hand, registered 153 the last time I was tested. I believe that is well above the threshhold. I'm not sure why any of this is relevant, but since you brought it up I'm more than happy to share.

In a game with sniper rifles and semi-realistic bullet damage, the aggressor is overwhelmingly successful. If the person who shoots first has any skill, they won't reveal themselves until they're assured of the kill...If you have time to fire back, it means the other person was a scrub.

If you remain motionless in the open long enough for your agressor to be assured a kill, then you have failed already. I have played this game for over 600 hours and I have been sniped exactly twice - once very early on when I crouched in a field to check my map, and again recently while I was foolishly looting an enemy tent in broad daylight on a ridgeline visible from over 1km in every direction.

Two sniper deaths in 600+ hours. Why? Because I move quickly from cover to cover. I travel in dense forest whenever possible, and if I must cross through a field I do so at its most narrow point. I never stop to interact with my gear menu, read my map, or take any other action which would stop my movement for more than 500ms when I am in the open unless absolutely necessary. Even if I am losing blood to hunger or thirst I will wait until I reach a tree line, prone behind a rock and then eat, drink or check my map.

Take responsibility for your own safety against snipers. Very, very few snipers in this game are skilled enough to hit a target at full sprint from more than 400m away. Don't stop moving and they will not have an opportunity to kill you.

As for the "scrubs," are you purporting that this game has none? I would challenge that assertion. Scrubs, if being a bad sniper is what it takes to qualify, are very common in DayZ. In fact, I would argue that there are more scrubs than there are accomplished snipers. Especially on servers which do not have map waypoints or nametags which trivializes range finding and scope alignment.

Classic strawman arguement. No deathmatch game has anywhere near this large a map, and the reason is that it would last just as long. Trite, and worthless point.

Okay, first you don't seem to understand what a strawman argument is, because that wasn't one.

Second, even if you ignore the 40+ Day survival times, you can't ignore the fact that only 14% of deaths in the game are a result of murder. That doesn't strike me as very death-matchy.

Are there other "deathmatch" games where 85%+ of the deaths result from NPCs or environmental hazards? I would be interested to learn of them and better understand exactly what your personal criteria are for determining whether a game is, in fact, a deathmatch.

You can get a group of people together, but you can't actually build a goddamn thing. You can't clear an area of zeds. Tent forests will get looted because there's no one to watch it, and you don't need a tent full of loot for anything except staring at a tree and eating/drinking when an indicator starts blinking.

Okay. This is standard "it's Alpha" stuff, bud. More mechanics are coming. Be patient for them, or don't. Your call.

You can rebuild vehicles, but for what purpose?

• Faster travel when searching for helicopter crashes.
  
• Ability to pick up friends on the coast when they spawn, getting together much faster.
  
• Huge storage space. Especially useful for other vehicle parts, fuel and extra backpacks.
  
• Can run over zombies.
  
• They're really fucking fun to drive.
  

I want the game to have less mindless PvP. So do members of the community.

Members of the community also want quest hubs, and guard NPCs, and "boss zombies," and no-kill safe zones, and PvE servers and a host of other things that would rip out DayZ's soul and flush it down the toilet where it will come to rest with every other watered-down, casual-friendly online game that has been shoved down our throats for the last 15 years.

I have every hope and confidence in rocket to ignore most of their pleas - even if that means limiting the audience to people who appreciate what he has created.

It's a game that is far more realistic in encouraging killing others, going out of it's way to make working togather difficult.

Working together is the most rewarding aspect of the game.

It should be difficult.

Nothing worth having comes easily, right?

Shooting on sight is the best, easiest, and most rewarding personal strategy.

That entirely depends on what your personal goal is in the game. If kill count is it, then yes. If never dying or losing your gear is it, then yes. If you want to actually have interesting experiences with other players then no, that is not the best strategy. Obviously.

So decide what your goal is and start working on it.

Cooperation is a losing strategy because real life aspects of cooperation aren't supported, and nothing of value can be gotten through cooperation. There is no worthwhile endevor that requires multiple people

Survival isn't a worthwhile endeavor?

Or are you seriously arguing that working together with other survivors doesn't improve your chances of living longer?

Seriously?

Please refer to this thread for a long list of why this is a completely silly argument. A partner is the most valuable thing you can have in the game. More powerful than any piece of equipment or gun.

And on top of that, again, it's Alpha. More team work and cooperative elements are on the way. We all know this. Some of us are awaiting them patiently.

Others... less so, apparently.

You're 100% wrong when you say this game isn't a free-for-all deathmatch.

14%.

Fourteen in every hundred deaths is a murder.

I keep pointing this out. The murder rate is actually going down every day; and it will continue to fall, I expect, as new mechanics are added to support communication, squad identification and cooperative game play.

Free-for-all deathmatch?

Perhaps the reason you keep reading the same things from me is because I have to respond to the same asinine, baseless claims that get parroted here on the forums every day? Just a thought.

Cheers for the post, though. Good read.

Edited July 12, 2012 by ZedsDeadBaby

[grizzle 21]

14%.

Fourteen in every hundred deaths is a murder.

And you know this number to be accurate how?

Does it count players that get shot, don't die and DC before they do? Does it count players that get shot - then hit/eaten by a zombie as a murder or does the zombie get credit for the kill? Does it count players that get shot, pass out then bleed out? Exactly what incidents count towards a murder? Have you checked the code to see that it is calculated correctly and doesn't have a bug?

What counts as a survival attempt? Is that all newly started characters? Does it count characters that opt to respawn and don't die to a zombie or other player? Does it count players that die due to bugs/glitches/bad physics? Exactly what counts as a Survival Attempt?

Obviously only rocket/devs can answer most of these, but unless you know for a fact these numbers are 100% accurate and reflects data that we *think* it reflects we don't know for sure.

I realize it's all you have to go on, but I'd be more hesitant to use it as a point of argument for the whole "death match" issue. It would be nice to have a full explanation of those numbers.

[chhopsky 25]

The only stranger to ever really put any effort into helping me, and dragged/protected my injured, ammo-less sorry ass for kilometers to the hospital in Cherno (!!) was wearing a bandit skin. Flagging is silly.

[Ryziou 0]

I think this is a solid good idea, it'll be funny to see the amount of bandits that will pop up in every server.

Edited July 13, 2012 by Ryziou

[trashcanman 15]

Take responsibility for your own safety against snipers. Very, very few snipers in this game are skilled enough to hit a target at full sprint from more than 400m away. Don't stop moving and they will not have an opportunity to kill you.

His larger point, which you didn't address, has nothing to do with snipers. It's about the overwhelming advantage of agression in the game to the point there is no "return fire."

The sniper was just the most obvious example.

Second, even if you ignore the 40+ Day survival times, you can't ignore the fact that only 14% of deaths in the game are a result of murder. That doesn't strike me as very death-matchy.

Maybe you can ignore that because I don't think it's very reliable.

First you've got deaths from people trying to respawn. I know I'll respawn ~20 times to try to get closer to my friends if I died because it's faster than walking. Then you've got deaths to glitches that occurred but weren't intended by the game. Then you've got people that broke a leg, and didn't die, but didn't want to crawl and just respawned. Then you've got all the noob deaths from people just not knowing how it worked. Then you've got all the testing deaths from people just trying stuff out (how far can I fall? how cold can I get?). Then take out zombie deaths that occured because of PvP (you had to run from someone but a zombie got you). Take out all that kind of stuff that numbers' far higher.

But even if it wasn't, even if it was still 14%, you can still ignore it because there's a tipping point where you stop dying to anything but players. Once I've got an ALICE pack, full tools, a couple water bottles, a good rifle, a good pistol, plenty of ammo, then after that I'm set. I don't have to raid places for more stuff I hunt and drink from lakes and spigots. There's zero risk of zombie-related deaths at that point, if I so chose. The only way I would die is another player and the only reason that would happen is because I made the choice to take the risk to end the boredom of just surviving.

Working together is the most rewarding aspect of the game.

I disagree completely. Looting stuff is. Or k illing people. Hardly anyone is going to say "working together."

That entirely depends on what your personal goal is in the game.

No that's not correct at all. It's heavily influenced by other people's goals. If your goal is to make a friend, and their goal is to murder you, then your strategy of saying "Hey wanna be friends?" is not the best because you will constantly fail. People will just shoot you again and again forever and ever. Other people's goals also matter significantly especially if they make yours unachievable.

Survival isn't a worthwhile endeavor?

Hatchet, Water Bottle, Knife, Matches. Get those 4 I could survive till there were no more servers hosting this game if I wanted to just live in the woods like a hermit.

Please refer to this thread for a long list of why this is a completely silly argument. A partner is the most valuable thing you can have in the game. More powerful than any piece of equipment or gun.

That's not what that is at all. That's a long list of why it's fun to play with friends. If you're sharing equipment and on Skype with your friend effectively you're just one stronger unit. There's still no reason to kill anyone outside your unit, ever, and every reason to always kill them.

That's the point.

And on top of that, again, it's Alpha. More team work and cooperative elements are on the way. We all know this. Some of us are awaiting them patiently.

All that and you finish with "...but more cooperative stuff is coming..." seriously? Okay well then you're 100% wrong and it's just deathmatch, now, but more is coming.

Free-for-all deathmatch?

Yeah that's what this game is. What you're doing is kind of trying to argue around the edges. The elephant in the room you're not addressing is that in practice, not in forum-game-theory, nearly everyone playing the game is running around shooting each other as often as is possible given the size of the map and the other requirements of life like food/water.

Once you get good the zombies are trivialized, time between spawned and geared out goes way down, and the environment poses little threat at all (can't freeze, can't die to an animal etc).

You can only loot so many guns before you're going to get bored of looting guns and want to shoot people with them. This is a cool death match game if that's what people like and I like that also, but I'd like it more if it was something more than that which is what it felt like when I started playing it, before I figured out there was nothing more than that.

Edited July 13, 2012 by trashcanman

[funionz 7]

Why is it every time someone takes issue with the game, an mmo is mentioned?

[chhopsky 25]

round 80% of the server's best loot is in 3 locations. If you decide you don't need good gear, just food, water, and hunting supplies, your ability to survive is nearly limitless. Stick to worthless areas of the map, and be bored out of your mind, because there is nothing to do if you decide you just want to live. No challenge, just tedium. Why play that game when you can just stare at a wall in real life?

This is called Supply & Demand. Weigh up your capabilities vs the risk vs the reward and act accordingly.

I want the game to have less mindless PvP. So do members of the community. I pictured a game that was similar to UO in the wilderness, where you had to keep your eye on blues who might turn on you or steal from you, but spontaneous teamwork, which is human nature, would be supported. Day Z artificially punishes the natural tendency to team up by having everyone look exactly the same (no ability to recognize friends vs foes from far off), having NO specialization, removing as much interdependency as possible, and making the only plentiful resource be

weapons. It's a game that is far more realistic in encouraging killing others, going out of it's way to make working togather difficult.

You want something this game is not and will never be. If the community support was really so vivid for this then servers would be FILLED with people banding together wanting to take on murderers, huge mobs of survivors would raze the servers of bandits.

I cannot help but to notice that is not occurring.

Individual players can't affect that this game has become a deathmatch on a massive map. Cooperation is a losing strategy because real life aspects of cooperation aren't supported, and nothing of value can be gotten through cooperation. There is no worthwhile endevor that requires multiple people, you can't customize your character at all, so it's really easy to kill allies who can only be found and worked with due to teamspeak/skype, which are external programs.

Really? I regularly play with 1 - 3 other people that I know IRL and we have no problems. What are you doing wrong?

I, like many other players, have played the game extensively for a few weeks before realizing how incredibly empty it is once you look at a loot map and at the game mechanics.

The figures don't show what you're saying.

All that said, I like some of your suggestions:

1) Rewarding goals that can only be achieved via cooperation. -Completely missing

2) Character customization so it's easier to tell friend from foe (this is a problem stone age people solved) -Completely missing, and ghillie suits are common enough that it wouldn't matter.

3) More end-game things to do. Zombies are completely static enemies unless they do something surprising due to a bug. Gear can be gotten in an hour. Food and water are plentiful. Vehicles, which take a lot of time to get repaired and fueled, are easy to destroy and don't really provide any benefit other than storage.

1. I'd like to see more aggressive and random zombie behaviour and greater numbers that would make more dangerous areas that you perhaps couldn't fight off without more people. That would make things feel more dangerous but at the moment I feel greater worry about other players than zombies because I can predict the zombie behaviour. Maybe I shouldn't be able to? Not sure. Random hordes of zombies running between areas chasing a rabbit for example. Or places populated with LOTS of them, with great gear. Needs more zombies.

2. More character customisation would be very useful, yes.

3. Yes, more things to do would be good. It's difficult to craft that tool set to make it not 'event' WoW-Raidey but it's doable.

4. Vehicles are great because of the distances involved, they can make crossing dangerous areas much more safe.

Maybe I was worse when I started playing but I seem to remember it being much harder to simply survive now. Maybe I'm being smarter. Who knows!

[DeadManDan 23]

Wow 19 pages of lengthy inconsequential back and forth bantering. And I thought my topics were bad.

[chhopsky 25]

As a sidenote, the stats on the front page show 12.8m survival attempts, and 1.8m murders. Realistically, we're looking at a 14% murder rate. One out of every 7.1 deaths is to player on player action. The statistics show that the game is not overwhelmingly deathmatch.

[trashcanman 15]

You want something this game is not and will never be. If the community support was really so vivid for this then servers would be FILLED with people banding together wanting to take on murderers, huge mobs of survivors would raze the servers of bandits.

Maybe you're right. In that case myself and many many others will stop playing it because as a deathmatch game, it's a bad one. The netcode is awful, the animations are bad, the hitboxes are fucked. I have fun with PvP because it's high-risk, high-reward but the mechanics of it are god awful. If I want a death match game I'll play a good one.

And after you reach the "tipping point" this game stops being zombie/survival and becomes (**drumroll**) Arma II. And I don't like Arma II and neither did very many other people. That's why it was a niche milsim game in the first place and the only reason most people have even heard of it is because of DayZ.

We didn't come to DayZ to deathmatch in a shitty milsim game we came to play out our zombie apocalypse survival fantasies and the zombie/survival part falls by the wayside completely once you've reached a certain point in a life.

If that's this games end game will it was fun until I figured that out I guess. I don't want to stop playing this game, but if all I have to do is shoot jerky-animated, laggy players in the back as they call out "Hey man I'm friendly I don't have anything come on man!" then that's not DayZ it's DayZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

As a sidenote, the stats on the front page show 12.8m survival attempts, and 1.8m murders. Realistically, we're looking at a 14% murder rate. One out of every 7.1 deaths is to player on player action. The statistics show that the game is not overwhelmingly deathmatch.

Even the most basic bit of thought could tell you that's probably not accurate.

If I'm playing with a friend and I die, I might respawn ~20 times to get a little closer to meet up again. That's 20 deaths for no reason.

People might like to test the mechanics. "How long can I go without food" or "How cold can I get" or "How far can I fall and not break a leg."

There'll be glitch deaths like a zombie got your through a building that ought not to count.

That statistic is likely really unreliable. From my personal experience, I can say that nearly every single time I spawn now, my death comes at the hands of a player. The survival part is trivial after you put a couple weeks into the game. I probably died 20 times before I even found a gun. Those don't count.

Edited July 13, 2012 by trashcanman

[Dr. Toros 8]

Well, there you have it. Always a good sign when a post starts off with a crass ad hominem assault. This does not bode well for the rest of the post, but I'm going to give it a read and careful consideration anyway because that's the sort of bloke I am.

Incidentally, you're right. My wife is not a genius; though, she is quite intelligent, an awesome cook, an incredibly loving mother and isn't above getting a bit freaky after a couple glasses of wine. So, I keep her around despite her faults.

My IQ, on the other hand, registered 153 the last time I was tested. I believe that is well above the threshhold. I'm not sure why any of this is relevant, but since you brought it up I'm more than happy to share.

My line of ad hominim was designed to secure a real response. It had to hit what I would assume to be personal territory to get the detailed response I wanted. I apologize if it wasn't necessary.

If you remain motionless in the open long enough for your agressor to be assured a kill, then you have failed already. I have played this game for over 600 hours and I have been sniped exactly twice - once very early on when I crouched in a field to check my map, and again recently while I was foolishly looting an enemy tent in broad daylight on a ridgeline visible from over 1km in every direction.

Two sniper deaths in 600+ hours. Why? Because I move quickly from cover to cover. I travel in dense forest whenever possible, and if I must cross through a field I do so at its most narrow point. I never stop to interact with my gear menu, read my map, or take any other action which would stop my movement for more than 500ms when I am in the open unless absolutely necessary. Even if I am losing blood to hunger or thirst I will wait until I reach a tree line, prone behind a rock and then eat, drink or check my map.

Take responsibility for your own safety against snipers. Very, very few snipers in this game are skilled enough to hit a target at full sprint from more than 400m away. Don't stop moving and they will not have an opportunity to kill you.

As for the "scrubs," are you purporting that this game has none? I would challenge that assertion. Scrubs, if being a bad sniper is what it takes to qualify, are very common in DayZ. In fact, I would argue that there are more scrubs than there are accomplished snipers. Especially on servers which do not have map waypoints or nametags which trivializes range finding and scope alignment.

Yes, this game is full of scrubs. It's also full of griefers, has an easily exploitable design, terrible AI, and no end-game content. Early game content is corrupted by heavily armed bandits sniping in major cities.

My point is that surviving, by itself, is both easy and tedious. Perhaps you're extremely careful and only play when you have 5 or more clanmates on. But surviving isn't really rewarding in any way, shape, or form in Day Z. You could die, respawn, and have everything you have now back in an hour or two. What's the difference between a day 1 character with full gear and a day 40 character with full gear?

My point is that survival isn't meaningful in any measurable sense. I'll offer a kudos, but it seems like just a waste of time to me to spend longer preserving one life than it would take to replace it.

Okay, first you don't seem to understand what a strawman argument is, because that wasn't one.

Length of time between kills is irrelevant to whether day Z is a deathmatch or not. You suggested that the way to prove you wrong was to produce an obviously "deathmatch" game where matches go an hour or longer, while not accounting for the fact that deathmatch games always have smaller maps than day Z. It's a logical fallacy, how you categorize it is far less important.

Second, even if you ignore the 40+ Day survival times, you can't ignore the fact that only 14% of deaths in the game are a result of murder. That doesn't strike me as very death-matchy.

Are there other "deathmatch" games where 85%+ of the deaths result from NPCs or environmental hazards? I would be interested to learn of them and better understand exactly what your personal criteria are for determining whether a game is, in fact, a deathmatch.

That certainly isn't taking into account the people who are still learning to exploit the extremely stupid AI, or as another poster pointed out, die from a secondary cause instead of directly from the bullet. Everyone dies a boatload of times when they first start. This introduces a lot of filler deaths that make the number of player kills much lower than it actually is.

Does it count people who suicided because they broke their leg and were nowhere near a source of morphine and didn't want to waste their time? I'd need a more detailed breakdown, and focus on people who have been playing long enough to learn the ropes, and check to see if they took player damage that directly or indirectly caused their death. Getting kneecapped while running from zombies is a player murder, not a environmental kill.

Large maps and environmental hazards are removed from most deathmatch games because they slow action down enormously. Deathmatch means everyone is trying to kill everyone, and in most areas with most people, that is in fact the goal.

Okay. This is standard "it's Alpha" stuff, bud. More mechanics are coming. Be patient for them, or don't. Your call.

• Faster travel when searching for helicopter crashes. -Also, much more obvious, and many people will shoot at you simply because they can
  
• Ability to pick up friends on the coast when they spawn, getting together much faster. -Fair point
  
• Huge storage space. Especially useful for other vehicle parts, fuel and extra backpacks. -Vehicles supporting themselves is not enough to justify the expenditure of effort.
  
• Can run over zombies. -valid if not particularly helpful given the state of the A.I.
  
• They're really fucking fun to drive. -Yes, compared to other Day Z activities.
  

I am patient of them, and I think it has potential, or I wouldn't waste time pointing out its flaws and looking at the suggestions.

Members of the community also want quest hubs, and guard NPCs, and "boss zombies," and no-kill safe zones, and PvE servers and a host of other things that would rip out DayZ's soul and flush it down the toilet where it will come to rest with every other watered-down, casual-friendly online game that has been shoved down our throats for the last 15 years.

Quest hubs is bad, but I think that you could put a really awesome spin on guard npcs if day Z was on a better engine. Rescuable npc survivors that you can put in your base and give weapons to would very much be in line with "zombie survival simulator" while providing protection for player bases (which I heard a rumor were in the works?)

Zombie bosses I see no issue with, in fact there should be a challenge besides other players to get high end loot. Why not have all the best weapons that currently spawn on the ground be spawned on zombies that use them? I fail to see how that would harm the game.

PvE servers are a bad idea, but not for the reason you think of. PvE servers would be fucking boring, as there would be nothing to do. Everyone would run to stary sobor and have maxed out loot immediately, and have nothing else to do except shoot endlessly respawning zombies and drive cars around.

Day Z doesn't have a soul. It's lack of a soul is why many people are drawn to it. The idea of killing other players while being at a huge advantage is appealing, as is the ability to full-loot. Other people see a zombie survival simulator and want to see what that would be like.

Pre-trammel UO, if you played it, was a far better version of Day Z in many, many ways, and very different from every game that came after. Full-loot. Player housing. Stealing from other players. Player killing. It turned into something terrible, but it was probably the most free and fun game that has existed.

I have every hope and confidence in rocket to ignore most of their pleas - even if that means limiting the audience to people who appreciate what he has created.

Currently, this game suits griefers and people who like to pretend to be sociopaths perfectly. It's ill-suited to anything but deathmatch, and that's all that is going to be left if things don't improve.

Working together is the most rewarding aspect of the game.

It should be difficult.

Nothing worth having comes easily, right?

Why exactly should teamwork be so difficult again? Working together and specialization is what took humans to civilization. It is actually the most natural thing we do, having been heavily selected for for thousands and thousands of years.

Also, if things worth having are difficult, then why is it so easy to find guns, particularly high powered sniper rifles?

This game is so incredibly backward in many ways. Teaming up in an apocalypse would happen. It would happen face to face, and trust would be built. Day Z actively works against that with the complete inablity to customize your appearance, and the fact that everyone has the same skillset. Neither of these are at all realistic.

Teaming up in day Z is done outside of the game. People don't form friendships brought on by crisis, because you can't tell friend from foe from far off. People get around this by using teamspeak and similar programs to have the ability to communicate at unrealistic distances, but accidental shootings are easy to do, because everyone looks the same. This is a major, major flaw.

That entirely depends on what your personal goal is in the game. If kill count is it, then yes. If never dying or losing your gear is it, then yes. If you want to actually have interesting experiences with other players then no, that is not the best strategy. Obviously.

Day Z is not well-implimented. The people who would be most successful in a real apocalypse would be those people who rebuild civilization, as a long term goal. Short term, you want to amass weapons and resources and technology to get an edge so you can claim/build a base and then hold it.

Day Z you can ONLY destroy, which is a dead-ended strategy.

So decide what your goal is and start working on it.

Survival isn't a worthwhile endeavor?

Or are you seriously arguing that working together with other survivors doesn't improve your chances of living longer?

Seriously?

Please refer to this thread for a long list of why this is a completely silly argument. A partner is the most valuable thing you can have in the game. More powerful than any piece of equipment or gun.

And on top of that, again, it's Alpha. More team work and cooperative elements are on the way. We all know this. Some of us are awaiting them patiently.

Others... less so, apparently.

I'm giving it slack because it's an alpha. But many people think those teamwork and cooperative elements aren't important, that the current deathmatch kill on sight is ideal.

Where Day Z fails the hardest is because using the tools the game gives you, finding that partner is difficult. Building trust is difficult. Telling it's them when you're scanning a field with a scope is difficult. When you need to go out of the game to do something that should come naturally, the game has failed.

"14%.

Fourteen in every hundred deaths is a murder.

I keep pointing this out. The murder rate is actually going down every day; and it will continue to fall, I expect, as new mechanics are added to support communication, squad identification and cooperative game play.

Free-for-all deathmatch?

Perhaps the reason you keep reading the same things from me is because I have to respond to the same asinine, baseless claims that get parroted here on the forums every day? Just a thought.

Cheers for the post, though. Good read."

There are several confounds in the decreasing murder rate. The first is the huge influx of new players as day Z reaches more people. Arma II:CO has been on the top of the steam best selling list for weeks now, the number of new accounts is growing incredibly rapidly. The ability to combat disconnect is also becoming widely known, which doesn't decrease the number of attempted murders, just the number of successful ones.

If we take out noobie deaths, and deaths that aren't counted but are directly caused by attempted murder, the number is probably closer to 1 in 3. Given that people actively avoid running into other people most of the time, that is still a pretty high number. Of that high number, how many murders were for a purpose, and not simply because one person had the oppurtunity?

Killing on sight happens because it is the only safe choice. You can't tell who someone is from far away, and killing strangers is the most rewarding strategy, and not the most difficult. Especially given they haven't fixed the d/c issue, what's to stop everyone from taking shots at everyone they see, and if the other person survives, not simply d/c and switch servers?

The lowest common denominator, the people who server hop for loot and combat d/c, essentially doing their best to make the game as unfun for everyone else as possible, have no reason to change their strategy. It's highly effective and easy to do. Killing noobies for fun with high-tier weapons doesn't cost anything more than the ammo wasted on it. Why would they not do something that turns electro and cherno into a continuous deathmatch?

I'm trying to articulate a better thought out version of the concerns that you tire of responding to every day. I hope I've given you a different perspective.

[s.taylor.75@gmail.com 23]

You want harsher consequences?

FUCKING MAKE THEM.

There are already anti-bandit groups, there's a subreddit where you can attempt to contract bandits to kill anyone, stop whining on the forums that the game isn't being played for you and do something about it.

This all day. That's the beauty of sandbox games like this. You can turn the tables on the bandits and hunt them. Or side with the bandits. Carebears that want devs to constantly nerf and penalize players have ruined so many games it's not funny.