Insanity or Haunting as a Debuff for wanton murder.

[Daverex 0]

You're alone. You've been alone since you woke up on the shoreline. A few bambis killed with the knife you found and you're set to move further inland with a backpack and some food they didn't eat. You've even picked up a few rounds of .308 Win for later when you find a hunting rifle.

About two hours of travel later you hear a loud scream nearby, and notice there are at least 7 zombies now actively moving your direction from the town you just left. You run to a nearby house but the door opens as you approach. You want to check inside but are afraid there may be another survivor inside, so you run further away.
Just as you think you've gotten far enough away to be safe, you hear another scream behind you as you run, seemingly between you and this horde of zombies. Something is luring them to you, but you see nothing.
Finally you get inside a building. A few zombies make their way inside, but you take care of them. You stop to drink and eat to recover from 10 minutes of sprinting and running.
But you hear footsteps in the house almost as soon as you're finished resting. You reach for your knife and sprint to the room you heard the footsteps from, but nobody's there. You're in this house alone.
The zombies outside notice the clamor you just made and continue circling your building, looking for a way inside.
How can this be happening? You ask yourself.

No idea, because this is a hidden mechanic.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

This part explains my thinking on some of the features shown above; they are not hardline necessities, but rather a brainstorm on how to mitigate "Kill on Sight" play without removing its viability and without being underwhelming.
Many people gravitate towards DayZ for its realistic atmosphere, despite the implausibility of a Zombie outbreak; in my personal opinion, a zombie outbreak such as the infected in DayZ is in the realm of science fiction, and something relatively incorporeal such as a haunting would not be too divergent from the content already within DayZ.
However, haunting is simply one explanation for most of these debuffs, others may attribute them to mental strain from all the murder, or some mental illness affecting how they see the world that only gets worse with greater feats of violence.
Perhaps these symptoms are from the zombie infection itself? Who knows.
That all being said; Here is my detailed suggestion on how to implement a mechanic like the one described in the story above:

Chance for haunting activation starting at about 4-6 murders regardless of fault.

5% chance of becoming haunted every day (determined at login and then every subsequent day cycle in-game). Going up to 20% after 15 survivor kills in a single life.

The haunting is harmless by itself, but some haunting effects can alert Infected and other survivors to your location.

The severity of haunting effects may increase with each survivor killed after 4.
Whispers can only be heard by the haunted individual. (Most likely the first notice the player is being haunted)
Footsteps (without a source) can be heard by everyone except Infected. Footstep loudness random, but always louder than a crouched survivor. Loudness determined on event initiation and unchanged until next event.
Doors opening with no one present: Check on enter radius for door: 4% chance of one door opening in radius around player if no other survivors are nearby every 10 minutes.
Unnatural cold snaps experienced by haunted individual may occur at random. The cold can be dangerous for a survivor who is already cold.
Blood/dark fluid decals may spawn near haunted survivor with or without injury.
The scream is the least likely to occur, (triggered only outdoors near towns at a 2% chance once every 10 minutes) and also the most life-threatening as it can be heard by everything in the same radius as an unsuppressed rifle shot. The position of the scream can be solved as 10 meters away from the haunted individual between the survivor and the nearest Infected.

Unknown if smudge sticks, salt, or holy icons will disperse the haunting, but possibly necessary to prevent permanent server logout for highly competitive players seeking an uninterrupted murder hobo experience on servers with this feature enabled.
Dying will reset the murder counter and thereby disperse the haunting. As a long-term fan and participant in DayZ, I would feel that I'm being treated unfairly if this mechanic were persistent across lives.


-This is an edited version of the same discussion that I have posted in the Steam Community DayZ suggestion forum.

Edited October 16, 2020 by Daverex
Elaborated on reasoning.

[rackinglad27 138]

3 hours ago, Daverex said:

You're alone. You've been alone since you woke up on the shoreline. A few bambis killed with the knife you found and you're set to move further inland with a backpack and some food they didn't eat. You've even picked up a few rounds of .308 Win for later when you find a hunting rifle.

About two hours of travel later you hear a loud scream nearby, and notice there are at least 7 zombies now actively moving your direction from the town you just left. You run to a nearby house but the door opens as you approach. You want to check inside but are afraid there may be another survivor inside, so you run further away.
Just as you think you've gotten far enough away to be safe, you hear another scream behind you as you run, seemingly between you and this horde of zombies. Something is luring them to you, but you see nothing.
Finally you get inside a building. A few zombies make their way inside, but you take care of them. You stop to drink and eat to recover from 10 minutes of sprinting and running.
But you hear footsteps in the house almost as soon as you're finished resting. You reach for your knife and sprint to the room you heard the footsteps from, but nobody's there. You're in this house alone.
The zombies outside notice the clamor you just made and continue circling your building, looking for a way inside.
How can this be happening? You ask yourself.

No idea, because this is a hidden mechanic.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

This part explains my thinking on some of the features shown above; they are not hardline necessities, but rather a brainstorm on how to mitigate "Kill on Sight" play without removing its viability and without being underwhelming.
Many people gravitate towards DayZ for its realistic atmosphere, despite the implausibility of a Zombie outbreak; in my personal opinion, a zombie outbreak such as the infected in DayZ is in the realm of science fiction, and something relatively incorporeal such as a haunting would not be too divergent from the content already within DayZ.
However, haunting is simply one explanation for most of these debuffs, others may attribute them to mental strain from all the murder, or some mental illness affecting how they see the world that only gets worse with greater feats of violence.
Perhaps these symptoms are from the zombie infection itself? Who knows.
That all being said; Here is my detailed suggestion on how to implement a mechanic like the one described in the story above:

Chance for haunting activation starting at about 4-6 murders regardless of fault.

5% chance of becoming haunted every day (determined at login and then every subsequent day cycle in-game). Going up to 20% after 15 survivor kills in a single life.

The haunting is harmless by itself, but some haunting effects can alert Infected and other survivors to your location.

The severity of haunting effects may increase with each survivor killed after 4.
Whispers can only be heard by the haunted individual. (Most likely the first notice the player is being haunted)
Footsteps (without a source) can be heard by everyone except Infected. Footstep loudness random, but always louder than a crouched survivor. Loudness determined on event initiation and unchanged until next event.
Doors opening with no one present: Check on enter radius for door: 4% chance of one door opening in radius around player if no other survivors are nearby every 10 minutes.
Unnatural cold snaps experienced by haunted individual may occur at random. The cold can be dangerous for a survivor who is already cold.
Blood/dark fluid decals may spawn near haunted survivor with or without injury.
The scream is the least likely to occur, (triggered only outdoors near towns at a 2% chance once every 10 minutes) and also the most life-threatening as it can be heard by everything in the same radius as an unsuppressed rifle shot. The position of the scream can be solved as 10 meters away from the haunted individual between the survivor and the nearest Infected.

Unknown if smudge sticks, salt, or holy icons will disperse the haunting, but possibly necessary to prevent permanent server logout for highly competitive players seeking an uninterrupted murder hobo experience on servers with this feature enabled.
Dying will reset the murder counter and thereby disperse the haunting. As a long-term fan and participant in DayZ, I would feel that I'm being treated unfairly if this mechanic were persistent across lives.


-This is an edited version of the same discussion that I have posted in the Steam Community DayZ suggestion forum.

I think you have lost the plot my old boy.

[drgullen 593]

@Daverex

I see where you're going with this, but you've taken it too extreme here.

The idea being to possibly reduce the amount of KoS by increasing the player's paranoia level.  I often already feel like this with the various audio elements already in the game, such as the creaking of trees.  I've sometimes even scared myself by crouching in a bush while overseeing a town for example and then moving slightly to produce the noise of feet movement, even though they turn out to be my feet and not an approaching player.

I like the idea, but to be blunt, not as you've laid it out here.  Very subtle additions to audible and visual perceptions would be interesting.  You could have the wind snap twigs nearby making it sound like players.  You could have a piece of paper falling in the distance produce the illusion of movement.  Things like that would work but doors opening by themselves or a "ghost" screaming when I'm about to take a shot at someone out the window would be a bit much.

[liquidsnake 275]

The idea of haunting goes too far for me, but mental issues as a consequence of killing on sight is an interesting idea. I see two problems with the idea as you presented it here; it seems to punish lone wolf gameplay even more than the disadvantage of being alone in itself already does and especially the haunting aspects are going quite far into the realm of fantasy. Too far for it to fit a game like DayZ. What I would probably be in favour of is if after a few kills there is a chance for the player to start hearing things that aren't there, as a consequence of being troubled by the murders and/or experiencing paranoia/PTSD due to experiencing combat. What these effects ought to be and how far they should go is an interesting discussion. Hearing footsteps that aren't there is fairly hefty in my opinion, as that is the main method of finding out whether another player is close in f.e. buildings. That'd be a big disadvantage, unless it happens fairly rarely (as in, rare enough for the player to not start thinking "it's just paranoia anyway" ever time they hear footsteps). I would probably be a fan of hearing distant screams (not too loud) and other subtle, uneasy sounds that make the gameplay atmosphere more creepy and might induce paranoia. But for me, I think the best approach is to make it subtle. It should probably cause players to lower their guard a bit to environmental sounds that indicate the presence of a player, but the sounds still ought to be distinctive enough for an attentive player to know what is real and what isn't. Not being alert, a player would risk not hearing the sounds properly and in hindsight wondering whether there is a player or not. I think that would be a great addition. It should probably apply to both singular and group players, even if realistically lone wolves would be more vulnerable to this. 

[Parazight 1594]

I've always liked the idea of debuffs.  I'm thinking more along the lines of getting cholera or a cold from infected melee combat.

Honestly, working on a complicated mechanic that requires 15 player kills, without dying, may not be the best use of time.

Should be rewarding players for kills, imo. 😛

[rackinglad27 138]

3 hours ago, Parazight said:

I've always liked the idea of debuffs.  I'm thinking more along the lines of getting cholera or a cold from infected melee combat.

Honestly, working on a complicated mechanic that requires 15 player kills, without dying, may not be the best use of time.

Should be rewarding players for kills, imo. 😛

I'd much rather have your idea than any of the above lol its way to silly to have phantoms running around screaming and all the other stuff mentioned above. infections and diseases contracted from infected hits are a must imo.

[Daverex 0]

On 10/15/2020 at 11:45 PM, rackinglad27 said:

I think you have lost the plot my old boy.

You have a point there. According to the popularity of PVP-focused servers, having a mechanic that would now discourage PVP in favor of a more PVE-oriented experience would possibly come as a shock to new players who didn't play the DayZ Arma2 mod and know the unrelenting terror of super Z's who would zig-zag towards you at frightening speed from 400 meters away at the drop of a flare. People were holding-off on shooting not only to avoid being targeted by up-geared players, but by the entire region's zombie infestation as well.
And I liked that better than what we have today.

On 10/16/2020 at 12:24 AM, drgullen said:

I see where you're going with this, but you've taken it too extreme here.

Yes it is a bit extreme. These examples are on the "far end" of solutions to accomplish greater organic RP viability in core DayZ. As it stands at the moment, murder has no perceivable consequences and therefore is believed to be encouraged. Item damage was initially believed to be enough of a deterrent, but in reality it is something not even considered when a player engages in a KOS policy.
For the most part, I just want to see some more attention given to the PVE aspects of the game. The infected are far too easy to deal with by default and most server owners do not care to change their settings without going overboard.
With a general lack of inter-human interaction as radios are pointless and nobody has any reason to pick up a pair of handcuffs except to roleplay, there really is no reason NOT to kill other players as soon as you have the opportunity. And if that isn't the game the devs are happy with, then I think something along these lines will be necessary without reverting back to some old DayZ trickery.

On 10/16/2020 at 3:02 AM, liquidsnake said:

The idea of haunting goes too far for me, but mental issues as a consequence of killing on sight is an interesting idea.

Haunting was merely a placeholder. A project codename. The features I outlined are not 100% and certainly not precisely what needs to happen if the devs were to decide that adjusting difficulty and player interactions to suit a more PVE experience.
Mental instability like paranoia-induced noises would be enough.
Fake gunshots from a vague, distant location heard only by the debuffed player, for instance.
But at the same time I feel like these KOS players should be MORE afraid of their surroundings. Zombies are weaker than they used to be, dumber than they used to be, and I rarely see more than 6 at a time (Just enough to take in a fist fight for a normal player), so something that procs when a player has murdered X number of other players, that makes zombies harder to deal with, feels almost necessary to me. Because PVP is something you normally won't consider until you're equipped for a real fight, anyway, right? Unless you're the murder hobo who will charge and fistfight the first person he/she sees.

On 10/16/2020 at 3:13 AM, Parazight said:

I've always liked the idea of debuffs.  I'm thinking more along the lines of getting cholera or a cold from infected melee combat.

Honestly, working on a complicated mechanic that requires 15 player kills, without dying, may not be the best use of time.

Should be rewarding players for kills, imo. 😛

I believe getting hit by infected attacks can already get you sick... at least, these two things have coincided for me in the past.
15 is a large number, I was thinking it would start somewhere around 3-5 initially, indiscriminately. As far as complexity? As someone who has dabbled in modding and programming I don't believe this is at all complicated. Getting player turning to be less jagged was complicated, and many of us would say it was a waste of time to begin with.
As far as rewarding players for kills... I don't believe that's very sportsmanlike to have a purely consequence-free environment in the context of DayZ. And as far as rewarding goes, players who have killed other players are already richly rewarded with the dead player's loot, after all. Would any further reward really be necessary, when it's already so heavily encouraged? Having extra rewards for what is normally a heinous crime seems farcical, to me.



Thank you for your replies.

Edited October 21, 2020 by Daverex

[Exxoduss 61]

I made this suggestion before, to help mitigate KOS instances on the shoreline... but instead of a haunting I was thinking more along the lines of insanity meter... sorta like in dont starve. everyone you kill self defence or not ticks atthis sanity meter.and voices and the player making noises at random times woulda been a side effect... then a tid bit i added onto it was have wandering around in complete darkness also knock at this sanity meter (Who walks around in the complete blackout of vision? NOBODY DOES, and if they do they will prolly stumble into something like a blind man would) so these players that would turn up there gamma so they could operate at nighttime with no light would stop.

 

I really wished they would bring back the broken bones aspect to the game and incorperate more medical instances and scenerios. I wished there where more vehicles in the game, especialy motor cycle or mopeds. I also wish they would add K-9's and horses as well as making food parishable and detectable by infected and wolves. Last but not least, when a player dies, his stuff and body (if not buried) should remain in the play world until someone buries or eats it. the players stuff should not despawn till the server restart but long enough to retrieve it. U can look at is that they dont know the person that they are racing to loot a dead body..  but the people that shot him also are using forms of communication not intended in the game. They need spawn points inside bases. they need more traps and those traps being persistent for more then 3 days. They need birds to shoot and snakes bites to cure, blisters and thorn scratches becoming infected. they need a method of sleep and rest...  

 

Its a slow procedure, but the essance and nature of DAYZ will always be survival.and it shall not end at this game or games version I assure you. Especialy now with augmented reality technology and cellphones. 

 

But they are doing a damn decent job as it is. Still ahead of schedual in my opinion even if they were to not have released retail yet. The complexity of this game is highly under appreciated.

Edited October 24, 2020 by Exxoduss

[Tonyeh 444]

On 10/16/2020 at 8:24 AM, drgullen said:

I've sometimes even scared myself by crouching in a bush while overseeing a town for example and then moving slightly to produce the noise of feet movement, even though they turn out to be my feet and not an approaching player.

LOL, I do that all the time. Especially at night.

[Tonyeh 444]

On 10/16/2020 at 2:19 PM, rackinglad27 said:

I'd much rather have your idea than any of the above lol its way to silly to have phantoms running around screaming and all the other stuff mentioned above. infections and diseases contracted from infected hits are a must imo.

This is something that I've wanted to see for years. It's silly that in the middle of a zombie apocalypse (or whatever the infected are) that the players cannot be threatened with being infected themselves. It makes the infected merely an annoyance and not a real threat, like they should be. Players should be, at the very least, cautious about having to do combat with 5 or more zeds, not simply annoyed in a mild way. At the moment, the worst the zombies can do is cause a little blood loss (easily sorted with a bandage or rags) and damage your clothes (hello Duct Tape).

It would also reduce the KOS factor by a margin to. Firing off that gun at another player will attract some unwanted attention from all the infected in the vicinity, with an increased % of becoming infected yourself, if the numbers are high enough.

Thing is, though, is that the DayZ infection would have to be curable in some way. But the cure should take time and not be an instant fix, thus killing the whole point.

 

[Tonyeh 444]

As regards the "haunting" idea, it's interesting but probably impossible to implement. There's already a mechanic whereby you can go mad if you eat human flesh in the game. Maybe that could be implemented too for murder. However, what's murder?

The only human players that I've killed were players that intended to kill me. I never fire on anyone in the game and in fact go out of my way now to avoid humans if possible, because 99% of the time it ends in pew pew.

So, I have "killed", but not "murdered".

But how would a mechanic in the game be able to tell the difference? I don't think it would be able to, which would mean a lot of people feeling aggrieved if their toon they'd been playing for months were to go mental because they had to defend themselves from players who should be playing CoD instead.

It's a nice idea for a way to reduce KOS (and I have heard variations of it before), but there isn't any way to implement it in the game without being unfair to a lot of players.

[William Sternritter 441]

On 10/16/2020 at 9:24 AM, drgullen said:

@Daverex

I see where you're going with this, but you've taken it too extreme here.

The idea being to possibly reduce the amount of KoS by increasing the player's paranoia level.  I often already feel like this with the various audio elements already in the game, such as the creaking of trees.  I've sometimes even scared myself by crouching in a bush while overseeing a town for example and then moving slightly to produce the noise of feet movement, even though they turn out to be my feet and not an approaching player

I think the sound design is very deliberate. As soon as you play the game as a survival game, you will be constantly on edge because of this and you know that another players are always lurking nearby. Never presume you're alone or isolated enough that noone will hear your shots. 

If on the other hand you play for the shootouts and you kill everyone you see, then any game mechanics like the one suggested will just punish those who play a survival game.

But even the survivalist will kill others. I quite enjoy hunting the careless loud ones, stalking player bases and so on. Often saves me the trouble of going into hotspots 😉

[Homeschooliazon 87]

My DayZ character enjoys it