Faces of the dead.

[chezzprinn 0]

Now before you ask, yes this is another insanity/morality metre system based on how much you kill, but hear me out.

Most of the systems that I've read always end up exclusively punishing a player for killing multiple people instead of presenting both a positive and a negative to slaughtering your way through 20+ hapless survivors. The system I am suggesting (open to tweaking of course) is this: Whoever said being insane in an obviously insane world was such a bad thing? My suggestion is comprised of two factors;fear and insanity. What better two primal human emotions emerge in desperate survival?

Insanity

Now this follows the basic pattern of what I've read so far. Killing people lowers your sanity.(Unoriginal, I know but killing another human is taxing one's sanity, however much people try to disregard this fact. Even the coldest of serial killers are visited by their victims.) Hallucinations are also not a new thing but I think if sanity is to become a factor in DayZ there has to be some form of psychological impact, namely in the form of hallucinations. Hallucinations could come in many forms, from an incessant malevolent whispering to the reappearing of people the player has killed, all dependant on how low one's sanity is but the main factor here is to not make them too detracting to gameplay. (i.e. Whispering is barely audible but unnerving, hallucinations are only momentary) The real negative to having a low insanity is that to other players a person that has low sanity is just that, visibly insane, making their motives clear and simple. This could be shown by random phrases blurted out fom the insane player through text e.g " Do you hear them, my loves?" Or something equally weird and disturbing. Mind you this level of insanity doesn't come from killing say 20 people but from prolonged murder of say up to 50+, this will dampen the desire to kill in most ( Who wants to be running around babbling uncontrollably unless they are looking for the perks of being insane.)

Now this is where I see people lacking in innovation. Why affect someone's playstyle negatively if you have nothing positive to counter it with? Is it better to be a madman in a mad world? As well as the slightly negative affects of having low sanity, players that reach the lowest sanity will also get an advantage over their boring,sane counterparts. That is fear. Have you ever been near a mad person and not felt fearful of their intentions? Someone who has reached the lowest possible sanity will have the ability to inflict fear upon others of a lower sanity. Fear would encompass shakiness, harsh breathing and shock in somone coming up against a manical bandit, giving the bandit a slight advantage. Keep in mind that not everyone who kills will get this, only those who embrace the pros and cons of insanity. As well as inflicting fear, players with extremely low sanity will gain a slight gain in health( SLIGHT is the word here, trying to emulate the disregard for self many insane people have.) So in short, you kill many people, you persist through the increasing amounts of hallucinations and obviousness of your condition and you will be rewarded somewhat. "But I want to kill people and not suffer in a loss of sanity." That's where you take your 'happy pills'. Anti-psychotic drugs are rare but enough of them will raise your sanity ( Think laudunum in Amnesia DD) and so you can happily persist in your butchery without moral repurcussions and will remain undetected by sane folks.

I don't know whether all or some of these ideas can be implemented but I'm just trying to put the idea out that maybe sanity consequences for Pking can also benefit mass Pkers as well as flagging them to potential victims if their sanity is low. I know this is a far way from being a complete fix to the over Pvping but I think it would make an interesting mechanic.

TL;DR

Killing people affects your sanity ( Gasp! What an overused, crappy solution!) but being insane doesn't always mean bad. You inspire fear in those with a lower sanity (shakiness,shock) and gain a slight boost in health ( Again, SLIGHT.This wouldn't be creating a horde of indestructible lunatics.) You do however, have to take the good with the bad and the lower your sanity, the more you hallucinate. (Whispers, phantom players, etc.) and become visibly insane (Random text denoting madness.) You can raise your sanity by finding anti-psychotic drugs which are rare but allow you to kill without feeling the consequences.

I know alot of this idea is unoriginal but I believe that maybe this way of addressing some sort of sanity metre in-game doesn't detract too much from those who prefer a bandit way of life. ( Sorry for the wall of text) :D

Note: Most of the ideas that I have listed here are NOT mine. This post was meant to be a CONSOLIDATION of all the various ideas out there about a sanity gameplay mechanic, the aforementioned post contains only ONE METHOD of how sanity could be implemented into the game that I gathered from OTHER MEMBERS of the community. The only original idea that I put forward is potentially integrating benefits as well as negatives to any mental illness element put into the game. The method DOES NOT matter, only the main point of this post being that IMO insanity/mental illness would be an interesting mechanic.

[Jeppzore 19]

Sounds cool :)

[hoik 415]

I like your take on this idea, also going crazy IS a kind of self preservation mechanism (I mean in real life, isn't it?) maybe this could translate to the game somehow?

IMO truly 'crazy' people make others nervous because it is obvious they have stepped beyond the 'norms' of society and so are unpredictable - then by extention if someone is acting 'crazy' in a apocolyptic world they must be fucking RAVING!! (what I mean is that the effects should have a subtle graidient and only mad-ass (dumb ass?) greifers should feel the true extent of this effect IMO.)

[stickninja1520 (DayZ) 1]

It would be funny to watch a crazy person to run around shooting things that aren't there. I like this idea

[Marten (DayZ) 2]

Like that idea that there also benefits from being mad.

But to encourage teamwork there are other things that should

be done first like making Zed more dangerous and so on.

But as a sanity system, that does not really punish players

for murders,

but makes the game just different for them,

it sure could be another cool nuance to the game.

[chezzprinn 0]

Thanks for the feedback! :D As a side note, I forgot to add that the idea of the community to implement cannibalism would fit nicely with this as truely insane people could benefit from being able to eat their victims. This is intended to be a consolidation of the various ideas about insanity I've read (with the added bit on benefits of insanity by myself) in the forums and so any suggestions as to what could change or be added are welcome. :)

[duddbudda 33]

yeah man, I don't know shit about mental health, but obv the naughty people should be insane because all naughty people are psychotic delusional and see the faces of their victims and eat people and mang dey cray cray

oh wait

if you don't know dick about mental health don't pretend like you do

here's why

[Kophka 109]

This is a pretty neat suggestion, I definitely like it. Kudos man!

[chezzprinn 0]

yeah man' date=' I don't know shit about mental health, but obv the naughty people should be insane because all naughty people are psychotic delusional and see the faces of their victims and eat people and mang dey cray cray

oh wait

if you don't know dick about mental health don't pretend like you do

here's why

I wasn't pretending that I knew anything about mental health, I was just compiling all the various things I had seen SUGGESTED by OTHER members of the community and promoting that maybe there could be a benefit to being on the low side of a sanity system. Obviously the various complexities of mental health will never be able to be fitted into a GAME and why would they? I wasn't saying that everyone who has ever killed multiple people feels remorse, goes insane etc, I just thought it would be interesting to implement a sanity system akin to that of Amnesia DD's which added another level of depth to the game. (BUT WAIT! NOT EVERYONE WHO'S EVERY BEEN IN THE DARK FOR PROLONGED PERIODS OF TIME GOES INSANE!!!111! YOU MUST BE IGNORANT OF MY OBVIOUS CONNECTION TO MENTAL HEALTH!)

It's a game bro, we can't fully emulate real life but we can add elements that make the game more fun to play, which IMO this concept does.

[striker75 3]

yeah man' date=' I don't know shit about mental health, but obv the naughty people should be insane because all naughty people are psychotic delusional and see the faces of their victims and eat people and mang dey cray cray

oh wait

if you don't know dick about mental health don't pretend like you do

here's why

Bashing a person for their idea doesn't help in anyway. He never said he had a PhD in psychology.

You're right, there are people that are completly fine and have some sick fetish with killing people and you'd never know it.

These people are rare, most killers in society (prison) have some sort of mental disorder.

Most 'reformed' killers claim the be haunted by visions of people they have killed. Be it nightmares, or less common, hallucinations of their past victims.

Even more so, we hear of soldiers suffering from tons of differnet things. Soldiers are trained to kill, it doesn't mean they want to. Most suffer from PTSD, not always from actually taking a persons life, but its still a main cause.

[Tigerhawk71 2]

Honestly it doesn't mater what system you put in, there's a core problem that remains.

People will shoot anyone they see who is armed, as a preventative measure. If you don't, that's probably because the other guy shot you while you thought about it.

The bandit system wasn't working for one reason - you went from thinking that armed people will probably try and kill you to KNOWING people would try and kill you, making the decision to pull the trigger even easier...

Until you can actively address that problem, then no bar or scoring, skin or morality system is going to work.

That said, your concept is interesting.

[zHDFXz 1]

So basicly the people who kill humans will suffer if the persons sanitys low and they did nothing to the play sounds cool

[StealthyBrayden 6]

I respect this suggestion...!!! Implement!

[duddbudda 33]

Bashing a person for their idea doesn't help in anyway. He never said he had a PhD in psychology.

You're right' date=' there are people that are completly fine and have some sick fetish with killing people and you'd never know it.

These people are rare, most killers in society (prison) have some sort of mental disorder.

Most 'reformed' killers claim the be haunted by visions of people they have killed. Be it nightmares, or less common, hallucinations of their past victims.

Even more so, we hear of soldiers suffering from tons of differnet things. Soldiers are trained to kill, it doesn't mean they want to. Most suffer from PTSD, not always from actually taking a persons life, but its still a main cause.

[/quote']

hearsay

the problem with OP's suggestion is that 99% of people suffering from delusions (or PTSD) display no violent behaviors and are not, nor were they ever, a threat to other people

so yeah, if certain mental health conditions are represented in DayZ they can't be lumped onto the killers, there has to be a full distribution across the population

[chezzprinn 0]

Bashing a person for their idea doesn't help in anyway. He never said he had a PhD in psychology.

You're right' date=' there are people that are completly fine and have some sick fetish with killing people and you'd never know it.

These people are rare, most killers in society (prison) have some sort of mental disorder.

Most 'reformed' killers claim the be haunted by visions of people they have killed. Be it nightmares, or less common, hallucinations of their past victims.

Even more so, we hear of soldiers suffering from tons of differnet things. Soldiers are trained to kill, it doesn't mean they want to. Most suffer from PTSD, not always from actually taking a persons life, but its still a main cause.

[/quote']

hearsay

the problem with OP's suggestion is that 99% of people suffering from delusions (or PTSD) display no violent behaviors and are not, nor were they ever, a threat to other people

so yeah, if certain mental health conditions are represented in DayZ they can't be lumped onto the killers, there has to be a full distribution across the population

I find I actually agree with you. My OP was a bit short-sighted but my main aim was to suggest including insanity (or some other mental condition) in DayZ with included benefits and negatives based on the condition. To be honest, I don't really care how it's implemented (PvP doesn't bother me), just that IMO, insanity would make a very interesting mechanic to survival.

[Strategos (DayZ) 190]

Not again.

Psychopaths don't by definition have empathy. They don't feel remorse or guilt. In short killers are likely to be the ones least likely to experience the symptoms you are discussing.

[chezzprinn 0]

Not again.

Psychopaths don't by definition have empathy. They don't feel remorse or guilt. In short killers are likely to be the ones least likely to experience the symptoms you are discussing.

Read my last comment.

[colly_spiers@hotmail.com 0]

Sounds a great idea for the future... hate to have to code it into the game =)

[Sentinal (DayZ) 20]

Hmm, With the implementation of cannibalism this could be made very simple. Kuru, if you don't know what it is, feel free to wikipedia it for more info than I will provide. It causes shakes and uncontrollable laughing in people, it is believed to have originated from cannibalism and can be transferred via consumption of human flesh. A bandit will generally eat human flesh because face it, it is an easy meal for him if he is already killing humans, so make it visible if another player has the shakes, make their hands shake like a much much lesser version of pain in order to affect them like Kuru would. If a player chooses to not cannibalize in order to avoid getting Kuru, then they can do so and actively remain in a state where they cannot be recognized as a bandit. This way bandits still have the ability to disguise themselves if they forgo the easy meal of cannibalism, and this makes sure that a player can never be sure if they are a bandit or not, but it still allows for a better idea because face it, very few bandits aren't going to cannibalize.

[chezzprinn 0]

I have just written a new thread that describes my own ideas on how insanity should be implemented for those who find this method a little too punsihing/unrealistic, whatever.

http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=29184