Incentive for not being a bandit?

[Ribano 46]

i know i think it should be brought back :)

[zipper 69]

I totally agree, and as it should be.

Like when you murder someone, you can be rewarded with anything useful they might be carrying but of course the risk of doing this is.... umm.. wait, what was the risk again?

Currently there isn't one other than possibly getting shot back if you miss, if they have a weapon, if that weapon has range to reach your position, and if they can even see where you are.

So as I said in my earlier post, maybe presenting 'murder' with more of a challenge for the experienced player who chooses to play the bandit role is the solution. That's not a nerf, its not a QQ suggestion, it's giving another level of gameplay for experienced DayZ players who might welcome taking on another challenge.

The risk is giving away your position to other people nearby. The tactical advantage the shooter has is the people in the area do not know where this person is. Or more importantly, the other snipers in the area do not know where this person is. As soon as they hear a gunshot, they are looking in that direction. The hunter now becomes the hunted as he has to reposition, and more than likely also deal with zombies. The zombies usually aren't a problem, but they are huge in giving away the position of a player since they all run directly at him.

The person getting shot also had to consider risk vs. reward. They took a risk running up into the firestation that is completely exposed on all sides. They could make it up there, get a fancy new item, and leave without anyone even knowing. They can also get shot. Risk vs. reward doesn't only affect the people shooting. The people getting shot need to take it into consideration as well. More often than not, they fail to do this, which is why they end up getting shot in the first place.

I'll give you another example. Say for whatever reason, you make it all the way up to the NWAF from a fresh spawn. You still don't have anything to lose, so running into the Barracks has no risk for you, yet has the potential to be very rewarding. You probably aren't as worried about being shot because you have absolutely nothing. But say in that one Barracks you find a M24, M4 CCO SD, Coyote Backpack, Ghille suit, tons of ammo for both guns, some morphine, painkillers bandages and a 1911 with 5 mags. Now would you just as carelessly run into the other Barracks at the NWAF? No you wouldn't, because now you have lots to lose. You would be more cautious. Watch the area for a little bit, make sure nobody else is around. You may not even risk going in at all, and you could just leave.

That is the risk vs. reward. 9 times out of 10, the people being shot place the reward above the risk. If your shooter sees you with all that cool stuff and he wants it, his reward is you, his risk is giving away his position and being shot by somebody else. When you decide you want to properly manage your risk vs. reward, you will see your time alive skyrocket, and your time scaveging on the beach for beans and an axe plummet.

[tammy@papergoblin.co.uk 0]

i know i think it should be brought back :)

Prob is that there's no coming back from this. Say you are not a bandit and attacked by one but you get lucky shoot back and kill them instead, then you're skinned as a bandit, like it or not. If it's going to be a skin thing there needs to be some way 'back' from it too.

It's not that fair on people who play bandits either really. It's like wearing a 'shoot me on sight' badge. The whole 'are they, or are they not' is taken out of the game.

Edited July 11, 2012 by MaryLou

[tammy@papergoblin.co.uk 0]

The risk is giving away your position to other people nearby. The tactical advantage the shooter has is the people in the area do not know where this person is.

Aye ofc, but that's the same risk you take with any shot you make, even if you're shooting animals for meat, or zeds. That's not specific to being a bandit and killing someone who has not killed anyone themselves.

Edit: Yeah naturally if there are other bandits in the area then you've given yourself away to them too, so that is a risk I agree, but it's still just an 'general' risk. Not everyone plays bandits and it's just as likely that other players in the area will drop to the ground or run the other way. (Like I often do if I've got crap weapons lol)

As soon as they hear a gunshot, they are looking in that direction.

I've not been killed by bandits much myself, but the couple of times I have been, the first I knew about it was a 'You are Dead' screen. If I had of survived I don't think the random shotgun or pistol I had would have really been much of a threat to my killer anyway (I was shot at range both occasions - just my experience though of course).

The person getting shot also had to consider risk vs. reward.

Yup. I never said they didn't. Totally agree. It's part of what makes the game what it is, that 'not knowing' if you are being watched.

That is the risk vs. reward. 9 times out of 10, the people being shot place the reward above the risk.

and I still agree here too. Someone who is playing the bandit role is providing that 'risk' factor, that's how it works. That's not in question.

I don't know what the solution is, but it's obviously a problem if (as someone else said) there's been 10,000 posts about it with suggestions. Perhaps the answer is headgear or something like that, so that you can't get killed by a single shot?

I honestly have no issue with the whole bandit/not bandit thing, I just figured that adding another level of challenge (like 'morality' that needs a drug to calm your nerves after a couple of murders) for those who wanted to play bandits would appease those who don't and add some extra fun to the game for those who do (and ultimately would only effect those hardcore players who rarely die and commit loads of murders). Edit: wouldn't even have to have any effect at all if you killed someone who wasn't 'an innocent'

Edited July 11, 2012 by MaryLou

[zipper 69]

That's not specific to being a bandit and killing someone who has not killed anyone themselves.

But this is the point. You have no idea if the person has killed anyone or not, just like you wouldn't in real life. And this is the risk you take when you encounter someone. You don't ever have to shoot anyone. But by not doing it, you are placing your risk way above your reward. Unless you are in dire need of medical attention, i.e. blood bag, you are putting yourself in serious danger by not shooting them. This doesn't mean there is no reward for teamming up with people. Playing in a group has huge benefits. But if you encounter a stranger by the coast there are really only a couple ways they could have gotten there.

1. Got geared up and ran back down to the coast to kill people

2. Got killed by zombies and just respawned

3. Got shot by someone and just respawned

4. Shot at someone and missed and ended up getting shot because of the miss

Everyone you meet that is a stranger has a 50/50 chance of being hostile. I hardly think there is a bandit or PvP problem. The problem comes from the Survivors who carelessly run into a city straight at a guy with a loaded gun screaming friendly over their mic. They are just asking to get shot. If they took their time and were careful about what they were doing, I'm willing to bet a large majority of the people complaining about PvP on these forums would disappear.

[jedimitch@gmail.com 0]

Killing a person has serious implications psyhologically speaking... so, (as an idea) i suggested, a couple of threads befores this one, that the more players you kill, the more painkillers you need to survive, as hunger or thirst, but in a more sutil way. If you think about it, it's kinda logic. Don't forget that the idea of the game, is to start as a civilian. You aren't a trained soldier (and even trained soldiers have psychologic issues after killing). May be after killing certain amount of people and satisfied the need for painkillers, it naturalize the idea of murder and then becomes normal for the reality of the bandit. That means no need of painkillers, or maybe the need of killing people LOL.... i don't know about that. xD just thinking outloud xD

Edited July 11, 2012 by jedimitch

[Bental 10]

[f4lk5 2]

So to begin with, I was like oh yeah PvP alright then, but ill be friendly, i wont kill anyone.

Then After saying friendly a few times and still getting shot, or getting shot before saying friendly or getting sniped (absolutely no warning) i got a little angry. And i moved on to survival instincts.

Theres a guy (1m away) *bang*, theres a body. Wonder if he was friendly.

Its how the game works mate.

Its the essence of PvP.

And if you dont like it then introduce them to your own karma system like weve all been doing, a shot to the head, and loot their corpse.

The best karma system around.

Edited July 11, 2012 by F4LK5

[tammy@papergoblin.co.uk 0]

The problem comes from the Survivors who carelessly run into a city straight at a guy with a loaded gun screaming friendly over their mic. They are just asking to get shot. If they took their time and were careful about what they were doing, I'm willing to bet a large majority of the people complaining about PvP on these forums would disappear.

This..

Have to admit, soo true.

[Fry (DayZ) 4]

I agree there should be no consequence or difference between being a bandit or friendly. In real life people who would kill you aren't going to wear special clothes identifying themselves. Furthermore they are only going to get better at shooting people without remorse. The gameplay for all players should remain equal to everyone, that's what makes the game fun. You all are given equal chances of survival from the game, what you choose to do with it is what will get you killed, kill other people, or survive.

[Scrugz 1]

I my opinion, there should be no punishment for bandits. Zombies just need to be much harder and should have more swarm tactics. Zombies need to be a very high threat in this game to encourage player cooperation, instead of people wasting ammo on other players only to reveal their locations to the zombies.

[LumberBack 43]

Killing a person has serious implications psyhologically speaking... so, (as an idea) i suggested, a couple of threads befores this one, that the more players you kill, the more painkillers you need to survive, as hunger or thirst, but in a more sutil way. If you think about it, it's kinda logic. Don't forget that the idea of the game, is to start as a civilian. You aren't a trained soldier (and even trained soldiers have psychologic issues after killing). May be after killing certain amount of people and satisfied the need for painkillers, it naturalize the idea of murder and then becomes normal for the reality of the bandit. That means no need of painkillers, or maybe the need of killing people LOL.... i don't know about that. xD just thinking outloud xD

I like it, like they are going crazy and need their medication...

[dallas 5195]

Agreed. But if you want to identify them, you need to be the one who witnesses their acts, and you need to be close enough to identify them visually. Expecting the game to watch what everyone is doing at all times and then deliver you a definitive list of who is naughty and who is nice so you can go about your business without ever getting anywhere near anyone on the naughty list is crude and completely breaks any sense of immersion in this uncertain world. Why should you know who bears you ill intent ahead of time?

In reality there would always be survivors to tell the tale. People standing in the outsskirts of Elektro, waiting for the shooting to subsside, too scared to enter, while they warn other more courageous survivors, who enters the city never to be seen alive again. Single survivors escaping, while the rest of their traveling party was slaughtered. The rumour travels, either based on eye witness account or simply rumour. Just as it did in early DayZ, don't go to Cherno, get off the beach. However in DayZ, while you're tied to a geographical location, you're not tied to a single realm of reality, you can switch servers and never ever encounter the people you witnessed.

Back then it was still dangrous to meet strangers, but because the bandit skin served as a kind of rumour, people who weren't decidedly murderers, would be reluctant to kill others unprovoked and people finding themselves as involuntary bandits, would make a greater effort to avoid confrontation. Friendlies were reluctant to fire and they would be rewarded for not firing, but even dedicated friendlies would kill eachother, when tension ran high, someone hessitating lowering a rifle, might just push your paranoia over the edge and soon someone would be dead.

Whoever fired first had the advantage, but would also risk getting labeled as a bandit for his actions. Whoever initiated friendly contact, calling out friendly, would run a risk announcing his presence, but would also avoid being labeled as a bandit.

As things have progressed, bandit skins removed, even despite direct channel is now trustworth as a means for communication between strangers, without access to clan voice programs, calling out: "Friendly, friendly!" is a complete joke. Mistrust has turned to pure hostility and new players learn KOS is the primary way of player interaction and the culture before only limited to Cherno/Elektro/airfields are now extended to every encounter. Mistrust, still allows for some trust, open hostility doesn't.

Fiction also embraced bandit skins to some extend, madmax, the road, murdering bandits dress and carry themselves differently than the meek, scared and frail. Like biker gangs dress to intimidate, travel in packs, fearless and as conquers, friendlies will travel in the shadows, ragedy and scared. Sole survivor might still betray and steal from eachother, but they'd rather scavenge, than kill others. The struggle for humanity is the essence of these end of world tales, this seems to be lost in DayZ atm.

This "murderer for an hour" crap is just a symptom of the fact that the bandit skin system is inherently flawed to begin with. It labels people falsely bandits who might have been acting in self defense (rocket has confirmed this is the reason they were removed in the first place), so the regeneration exists to even things out over time

I disagree, I've been labled as a bandit a couple of times for what I justified to myself as selfdefense. Some of my selfdefense kills include people stealing my transportation and a group of four looting our camp, turned out all of them were unarmed, but after the first went down, we just let lose like a fox in a henhouse. After a killing, justifiable or not, I felt a real psychologically humanity hit. Glad to be alive, glad to have protected my property and for a good while after the incident contemplating, whether I should just kill everyone I see.

After the bloodrush fades, I try to justify my actions, but also try to figure out how to avoid similar situations in the future. Hide my camp better, move more concealed and hardest yet, disengage from hostile situations rather than take unnecessary risks based on greed. When I took a big humanity hit even in selfdefense, I'd change my playstyle, because the bandit skin, would now place me at increased risk of either dying and having to defend myself, risking further humanity loss. So even friendly survivors, must recuperate their humanity, becasue taking a life, no matter the justification is a major taboo for the civilized and humane. Ask any honorable soldier to talk about what it feels like to kill another person, even if it was justifiable, he might show reluctance to talk about such intimate thing to anyone, but his own peers. Even in selfdefense you must reflect on how your own actions affected the outcome and you must be aware that you can easily be desensitized to violence and killing and find yourself struggling with your humanity.

The whole when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back at you hoopla.

If you witness a murder and identify the murderer, you should be free to punish that person as you see fit forever until they die and their crimes are erased, or YOU die and your memory of their crimes is erased.

If someone is murdered in a forest and no one is around to hear it, did it really happen?

DayZ murderers are pretty generic, all white females look alike. All survivors have the same build, many don't even bother chaning their profile's faces, many server's have kill mesages turned off. Many players aren't playing exclusively to one server, nor are their victims. The only consequence of being a massmurder is if you miss your shot. Bandits live a reckless life by seeking confrontation, they also live with an increased risk. But when you can spam respawn to select spawn location and be geared up within 10minutes, then there's no downside to playing bandits, because there's no downside to death.

I think that's the primary imbalance in DayZ is when you don't even care about staying alive, the game becomes so much easier. Spam respawn till you reach Elektro/Novi Sobor, run in grab gear, kill or be killed, repeat.

[LumberBack 43]

I think that's the primary imbalance in DayZ is when you don't even care about staying alive, the game becomes so much easier. Spam respawn till you reach Elektro/Novi Sobor, run in grab gear, kill or be killed, repeat.

yes they dont care, is what it all comes down to... but what about the people that do care about the whole survival experience, what about them...

[deepfried 95]

Alive Characters: 367,501

Bandits Alive: 67,750

Tell me, why should I bother reading the rest of your idea

Because those figures are useless for one. Average life expectancy of ~30mins, requirement of 2 murders to become a bandit, therefore most of those "survivors" are just bandits who haven't killed enough people yet to be officially classified as such.. and what's more for most lives even if you're trying to be a serial killer you wont make it to "bandit" before dying (maybe not you personally but I'm talking about an average life in a statistical sense).

The simple fact, useless figures aside, is that 80%+ of people shoot on sight (from my experience, and i'm sure many will agree with me).

For me the only question that remains is how to deal with this in a fair way.... are you a bandit if you shoot a survivor that is stealing your car? are you a bandit if you shoot someone who's not responding to comms and has you cornered in a building with 1 exit? (even if it then turns out he had no gun). are you a bandit if you're rolling with a clan and shooting non-clan members on sight?

There are subtleties that need to be very carefully engineered in any solution.

[LumberBack 43]

clear to say that if you kill more then one survior a day, then you are either bad at the game, or a bandit...

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

DayZ murderers are pretty generic, all white females look alike. All survivors have the same build, many don't even bother chaning their profile's faces, many server's have kill mesages turned off.

Sounds like you should go post in my suggestion thread for adding a player identification system.

You rightly identify server persistence as a barrier to long term target identification. I'm sure if we put our heads together we could come up with a work-around that would fit within an immersive player ID system without requiring the presence of a divine entity to do our observation and judgement for us.

Besides, basing fundamental mechanics on the current server system is probably not a great idea. Long term it is very unlikely DayZ Retail will use the same system of distributed private servers nor support server transience in precisely the same way as we're seeing in DayZ Alpha.

Because those figures are useless for one. Average life expectancy of ~30mins, requirement of 2 murders to become a bandit, therefore most of those "survivors" are just bandits who haven't killed enough people yet to be officially classified as such..

Okay, so just so we're clear - most people haven't killed enough people to be considered a bandit, nor live long enough to do so - but somehow they're still bandits and all the killing they're doing is ruining the game for everyone? Is that more or less the incredibly weird argument you're making here?

The simple fact, useless figures aside, is that 80%+ of people shoot on sight (from my experience, and i'm sure many will agree with me).

I absolutely love this. Abandon actual figures based on what's actually happening in the game, replace it with an arbitrary number you pulled out of your ass based on nothing but your personal subjective experience and top it off with the suggestion that just because people "agree" with you it somehow becomes more true.

Those are Olympic-quality mental acrobatics. It's like a cognitive dissonance salad with consensus bias dressing.

Edited July 11, 2012 by ZedsDeadBaby

[dallas 5195]

yes they dont care, is what it all comes down to... but what about the people that do care about the whole survival experience, what about them...

I think part of the problem is mmo related. Datamining, players being pretty good at figuring out the game mechanics and utilizing them the most effectivly, bypassing the persistancy, because death has become a relief, allowing the player to play more freely. For any developer it's pretty hard to keep up with the players, delivering endgame content to the most hardcore. Just like with mmos the most ambitious help beta testing, which also give them an obvious advantage getting those prestigious world first kills, at the same time exhausting the content as soon at it's released.

Maybe faction based strongholds.

1 for bandits

1 for friendlies

1 neutral for all and for neutral survivors.

When underground fatilities are implimented, few might serve as faction strongholds, either by placing no friendly fire triggers inside them or having armed AI guardians with high damage/health at the entrance and inside. Maybe zones in the stronghold requires a certain amount of humanity.

Maybe using the dogs as humanity detectors. Bandit dogs bark at/attack friendlies and vice versa.

I'd like to see some kind of unlocked features for people staying alive for 7 day increments.

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

Maybe faction based strongholds.

1 for bandits

1 for friendlies

1 neutral for all and for neutral survivors.

Why not just strongholds, and let the players decide if they want them to be faction-based?

no friendly fire triggers inside...AI guardians...zones in the stronghold requires a certain amount of humanity

Come on, Dallas. You've been on the forums long enough to know every single one of these is a non-starter with rocket. He would rather shut the game down than put WoW style city guards and safe zones in the game. That's the same ridiculous bullshit every MMO maker has been shoving down our throats for 15 years. "You can't do that here!" mechanics will not be in DayZ. Ever. I guarantee it.

So lets start talking about how we can implement mechanics that allow players make and enforce their own rules about who can do what and where?

Then we will be talking about things that might actually happen, which threatens to almost turn into a productive discussion.

[THEDirtySanchez 0]

To me, it's not about bandits. Bandits are going to play their way and have every right to do so. By my definition, a bandit will kill for loot or possibly just to eliminate a threat to their immediate area. That is fine by me. Besides bandits, I have two other classifications of "killers", 1) trolls who kill just to kill, and 2) survivors who KOS because they are afraid they need to beat the other to the punch. The thing I'd like to see resolved is the KOS syndrome.

The latest scenario I had was where I was in a supermarket picking through stuff and as I had my inventory open, I got popped. I don't think I was hunted by a bandit, but rather another survivor stumbled upon me and figured it was just easier to kill me while I was occupied out of fear of what I might do if I saw him. I don't see that happening in real life.

Why not offer a way to disable someone to loot them without killing them? What if we had something like a "freeze" option to knock out someone for X minutes/seconds (and possibly also drop all their inventory) and then you could loot them or retreat while they are unconcience. Bandits could still use this to be bandits (loot) and friendlies might find that more appropriate than just killing someone. Granted a "freeze" option sounds less than cool, but I'd like to be able to walk up on someone and basically tell them to freeze and drop their weapons. If I chose to loot, run, or kill after that, that's my/your/our decision. But at least there is an alternative to killing or waiting for them to see you and hope they don't kill you.

[guirc 6]

I think there should be downsides and upsides.

- Downside: You start to see visions (ghosts 'n shit, dead people, bodies that don't exist), people that aren't there, people you killed, see people as zombies, etc...

- Upside: "Lucid" vision is improved, can hear shots better, can hear heartbeats better and louder, human step is slightly different of the zombie step, reload slightly faster ("requires time with the weapon").

This is directly connected to humanity.

Begin a bandit is not an upgrade, it's a condition.

I wish rocket see this post =P

[tammy@papergoblin.co.uk 0]

So lets start talking about how we can implement mechanics that allow players make and enforce their own rules about who can do what and where?

I second this.

Maybe things could be added like an item that is a 'white flag' (the character holds it visibly). So that a player who is unknown can approach. It's still left up to the players how they deal with someone walking towards them with a white flag, or if a player chooses to use the white flag in the first place. It could be created as a 'weapon' item, so that if they are holding that up, they can't therefore have a weapon ready to shoot?

[Helsing 19]

Um... I'm pretty sure those stats on the website are wrong. Because I have never met a player that hasn't killed another player, or attempted to. I have killed tons of people and I'm probably not in those 60k. Do you really believe that 80% of players will not shoot you on sight? Grow up, please.

[mrducky (DayZ) 33]

The

Um... I'm pretty sure those stats on the website are wrong. Because I have never met a player that hasn't killed another player, or attempted to. I have killed tons of people and I'm probably not in those 60k. Do you really believe that 80% of players will not shoot you on sight? Grow up, please.

That might be putting it a bit harshly, but yeah, people should understand that the main page statistics can lie.

Some examples where the statistics might be badly off:

A ) Total player bandit percentages might have nothing to do with active player bandit percentages

- It is irrelevant as to how many overall bandits there are compared to overall players / unique alive character count.

- What is relevant is how many bandit players have played during the last say 24h (vs. non-bandit players played in that time)

The reasoning for that:

I would assume, for example, that many new survivors might have just played the game a few hours, gotten killed a few times, etc. and then decided that they are not interested in playing the game anymore. (Have you looked at stats of any games that release their player behaviour stats? Often more than half of the players never bother to finish the tutorial / very first level!). So it is totally plausible that there is a huge amount of those players that have just started the game, and then stopped playing. Their possibly alive character might be dangling in the stats, unused. So overall player counts and such might tell next to nothing about what is really going on in the game. The bandits could be much more active players.

I'll just assume that out of that some 100k players logged in during the last 24h, it is totally plausible that 30k or more might really be bandits. Which would give us about 30% bandit population at the servers, compared to the overall stats saying something like 13% or so. (This was just an example to illustrate, I don't really know if its that high).

B ) As far as I know, the game does not mark you as a bandit from your first kill during that life. Clearly this biases towards "non-bandit" stats, even though reality is different.

- Someone claimed at the forums that it would take 5 kills to become considered a bandit.. And bandit status gets cleared on every death nowadays. I don't know if that's really true, but if it is, then the bandit counts are totally off. They are really the "mass murderer" counts, not the bandit counts. Even if it would not require 5 kills, but say, 2 kills. It still heavily biases the survivor status over bandit status.

In detail:

Assume all bandits would be equally skilled (this is not really the case, but easier to illustrate the following point)... In that case, a bandit that meets another bandit, the chances are about 50%-50% for one of them to die. Lets say bandit A kills bandit B. Now A has a murder, and B respawns with a clean count. None of them are considered bandits. Now, A meets bandit C. Perhaps this time the bandit C kills him. At this point, you might have A and B with survivor status, possibly even C if he had recently died and that was his first kill. We have 3 bandits roaming around the cities, actively trying to kill other players, but yet, none of them appear as bandits according to stats. Because the lack of their skills / roughly equal skills, the probability statistics just keep them at about the equal 1:1 kill to death ratio. Most of the times the players won't get more than 1 kill before their death. Often they fail even at their first kill, even though they attempt it.

With this logic, a huge number of the (non-professional) bandits are kept below the bandit threshold by their constant deaths. Only the real mass-murderers / skilled professional bandits stay alive long enough to get tagged as a bandit.

So, if the statistics say 13% are bandits (a.k.a. mass murderers in reality), people trying to actively kill every encountered other player, just being bad at that, might still be way way more than that. Perhaps even over 50%. (Just a guessed number, who knows the real one, there are no real unbiased stats to tell this number).

C ) From the perspective of a player, banditry is more common than it is in reality

- The true pro survivors usually just avoid people. As that's the way you really can stay alive for a prolonged time.

- What does this mean in terms encounters in the game, specifically from the perspective of a, say, new player?

Obviously the new player will usually never meet those pro survivors who are scattered around the woods, and who actively stay clear of any other players when they hear gunshots or spot the player before he spots them. That is not to say that there would not be a number of such survivors in the game. Its just that they are very unlikely encounters.

So, when you really meet another player in the game, in any range that would even remotely allow any kind of communication (other than putting a sniper rifle bullet to one's head), then you can count out those survivors hiding in the woods.

So even if the number of survivors of the active playerbase would be over 80% (which I highly doubt, based on the previous points I presented). Then you can probably drop at least that 10%-20% of players who actively and successfully avoid any contact. Meaning that the probability of the other encountered player being a survivor is at least that much less than 80%. Maybe around 60-70%? Specifically for any new players, to whom the pro survivors could just as well be invisible (because the noobs won't be spotting them before the pros spot them and hide)

Because of those reasons explained above, I think that both the main page statistics might be simply incorrect and biased towards showing people as survivors and additionally, and additionally the players' perceived experience due to random encounters being more often bandit encounters over survivor encounters, the general feeling for many probably is that 80% of other players will shoot you on sight. This might be a bit excaggerated, but probably also more true than what the main page statistics like to tell us.

Until some proper unbiased statistics about this are actually collected and presented, I'll just roll with my gut feeling on this. (Which is that shoot on sight is the current prevailing trend over friendly encounters.)

PS. All that said... I am not trying to say that the PvP should be somehow prevented. Without the PvP, this game would just simply be boring any player encounters would be meaningless. Just saying that it might have gone a bit over the top - mainly deterring any new solo players away from the game, as they might get the impression that there is only PvP deathmatching going on in the game. Naturally this isn't an issue for established clans and groups of people or the solo bandits.

Edited July 16, 2012 by mrducky

[xximrtwoixx 104]

KOS is a product of the game and the scenarios players find themselves in. It will not go away, but rejoice as there is an easy alternative already in place that does not require gamification or magic skins, you simply choose to play the game in the way that will result in the most fun for you. And I will throw in some free advice....

As i'm not sure what game all of the nerf bandits/kos sight people are playing, I will explain the scenarios & game play most people find themselves in.

Even if your playing lone wolf a characters life cycle should resemble something like this:

1. Spawn on the beach

2. Go into a major city (or to Balota)

3. Loot all necessary survival equipment and medical equipment (If at balota find a gun and wait for someone that will have all survival equipment)

4. Leave Coast

5. Hit deerstands on way to Northern Location

6. Loot Stary, NW, Berizino for military equipment

7. Find tents/vehicles

8. Make a camp

9. Loot other peoples camps

10. At any place in timeline above locate and loot helo crashes

11. Farm any location included in stage 6 and horde gear for your eventual death.

If you look at the life cycle you see that at points 3, 6, 9, and 10 you are in direct competition for resources with other players that are at a similar stage in their characters life cycle. This is why people shoot each other in these locations. You decided to go to the fire station first so you have a primary, they went to church so they have a secondary and back pack, you both need/want each others gear so you shoot each other. I think 90% of pvp is centered around conflict or precieved conflict over resources. Precieved conflict equates to someone seeing you were they want to loot.

Leet Advice: Most "vet" or experianced players spend 80% of their time at the above locations listed in stage 6, as this is where they will have a chance at the best gear or best equiped players. If you don't want to be shot then avoid these areas.

Once you get past stage 7 above you have invested a fair amount of time and are well geared, this is the second cause of shoot on sight, you now know that you are a walking target/safe deposit box. People want your gear,cars,tents, etc. So you shoot anyone you see as this is the safest solution. This is just as it would be IRL, trusting someone you don't know has inherent risks and most players/groups that far along have more to lose than gain by being friendly. This can be avoided to a degree, simply avoid equipment that you know other people would kill you for.

IMO there's nothing wrong with the above, or the current KOS play style people use. I think it can be fairly logically explained when you look at the scenarios that occur, and I think its actually fairly authentic.

For all the people that don't like it, there is even a simple solution, just *avoid* the areas described above, and don't pick up gear people would kill to have. There is no need to add anything to the game, or change things to make it less authentic, players simply need to actually play the game the way that maximizes their enjoyment. If you don't want to be shot in the face then avoid the areas, players, and reasons that get you shot in the face. This solution is available to you because the game is a sandbox, you can live like a rat and avoid all contact with other players, you can be a civilian that avoids conflict, or a survivor doing whatever it takes to thrive instead of survive.

TLDR:

Before you QQ about bandit skins or shoot on sight ask yourself the following questions when in game and you are thinking about going to a location or you see a player:

1. Does highend loot spawn here? // Does the player have high end loot?

2. Do other players need/want to come to this location? // Do other players need/want this item?

3. Is this location on the way to a high end location?

4. Does this item make me feel like a badass?

If the answer is yes to any of the above avoid that location/item and understand that the other player will murder you.