Simple Solution to Banditry

[Badhaggis 40]

Except that auto aim was never implamented in the first place then yanked out.

[Capercaillie 16]

The thing that I have seen the most on these forums is "People choose to kill others in order to survive" well I have to call bs hardcore on this one. I have yet to die in game due to zeds because it's always been by other players. Ok just got to make this statement, I am not complaining I am just stating a simple fact. Every time I have been killed I have had either no weapon (got unlucky walking across a field to town), had a melee weapon, or didn't have a sight on the other player. Out of all these times I have not really had anything worth looting that you could not get from a building around me, I've seen new players dead on beaches all their original equipment on them.

If players were killing to survive they would kill zombies and rummage through buildings since that is where all the equipment to survive is. Players kill players just to kill.

Don't blame that "walking across a field to town" part on luck, it's just pure stupidity, and it will be 100% your own fault if you get shot in the face doing that.

I murder (almost) everyone in my sights. Sometimes for the loot, but ALWAYS for a reason, and that reason is not "lulz derp derrrp herp because it is funny derp".

The reason is: In 99% of the situations, it will be me or it will be you. I'd rather live, than die and let you live.

Oh, and about that bs "killing unarmed players". I have yet to see a player who will never pick up a weapon when they find one, and when they realize "hey, now I got the makarov, maybe I should try my chances on getting the AK from that guy who just let me go away, he can't be far, and if I die, so what it's just a damn makarov.."

And besides, how could I know, maybe that "unarmed" player is just a trap, maybe he is just a single part of a group, scouting ahead looking innocent.

I'm not gonna take the chance. If you take the chance, at some point you will realize, "damn, I was so stupid"

Learn from your mistakes.

"A man should not be measured by the times he has fallen down, but by the times he has got up again."

Yeah well, true dat, but a man who always trips on the same fucking branch is just plain stupid.

[Capercaillie 16]

And BTW i think this needs repeating, there is no longer any reason to not have side chat as people are just using outside teamspeak and the like.

This is one of the most retarded arguments I've seen here.

Side chat is for STRANGERS TALKING TO STRANGERS

ofc there are ventrilos, teamspeaks etc.. and I use them aswell.

But how the HELL am I supposed to use MY teamspeak server to communicate with that RANDOM STRANGER I hear shooting in Berenzino?

Am I gonna yell to my friends in TS: "Who is in Berenzino, friend or foe?"

They gonna tell me the answer?

Or is the random guy magically supposed to join my teamspeak server, considering he doesn't know I'm in berenzino too and he doesn't know me and he doesn't know I got a teamspeak, just exactly HOW is he supposed to join my teamspeak and tell me what is he up to, if he is friendly or if he is hostile?

Here is what side chat is for: Chatting to people you DON'T know, and who AREN'T on your teamspeak!

inb4 "there is direct hurr durr"

Which one is your call, you are in the stairs in berenzino, hear someone coming up

1) You start to type: "You there in stairs, stop!" and hope that the message gets through.

or

2) Take aim and wait to see someones face to blow off.

Yeah, thought so. If you pick number one, you will probably die.

This is where side chat helps. You can make CONTACT with that guy, minutes before he is in the stairs right below you. You can start talking to him when he is still 500 meters away, and make up your mind if you trust this guy or not!!

not when he has you on his sights..

inb4 "not realistic"

[Badhaggis 40]

I cannot argue with you because you were inb4 me apparantly.

[Cinc 3]

a few things id like to point out here

1. you mentioned this in the main post, but stopped from drawing the final conclusion. bandits are practically NON-EXISTENT. theres 2 types of people in this game, surviviors and sycopaths. the sycopaths kill for fun. the survivors kill due to lack of trust. many survivors might kill a well armed man for loot, if they have practically none themselves, but very few people walk around thinking "if i see another guy, im killing him for his loot". thats almost always a last minute decision, due to lack of trust or a horrible supply situation on your side.

2. the bandit skin was actully taken out because its unrealistic. "hey, i just killed 5 guys, know i have the random urge to wear this suit i conveniently found". ya... no.

my idea for fixing the trust problem is 2 fold. 1, increase the zombie difficulty. people are right when they say this is COD with zombies in between. make zombies harder, and that guy you just found could help more then hurt you. "NO, dont go that way. there's a MASSIVE horde over there" if you'd killed him, you wouldnt have his loot for long. make it hard to the point were sneaking in to grab loot (any actully good loot) is near impossible "hey, ive got another friend on his way over here. want to team up with us and assault that town over there? we can split the loot." the third of the loot from that town would be much better then the loot from that one corpse. and 2, give groups something to do. after you and your new found friends kill all of the zombies in that town, another group comes by. after a short but tense stand off, you 2 decide to combine your resources and make a small base in a nearby warehouse.

you use barbed wire to create a kill zone entrance, add all your best weapons to form an epic armory, and drag in a forge and other stuff from nearby buildings, and you've got a mini base. as time goes on, you all form a small topic on the forums to communicate, find a few new survivors, and raid nearby towns. eventually getting cars and other vehicles, in the end you get so much more from grouping up then killing that 1 guy for his loot. adding in stuff like this will eventually find us fixing the banditry/trust problem ourselves, rather then being forced to.

Edited July 16, 2012 by Cinc

[Capercaillie 16]

I cannot argue with you because you were inb4 me apparantly.

You just couldn't come up with a reasonable counter argument, that's why.

The reason I inb4'd "direct chat", well I mentioned WHY I did it.

Besides, last time i checked with a friend (a week ago?) Direct didn't work.

The reason I inb4'd "realism"

Well, it is plain stupid to use realism as an argument in a forum about a GAME.

just don't..

IMO

Side chat = good (with some language/spam restrictions yes)

please, say something reasonable to counter, not this "I won't with you because you instantly derpa derp hurr durr".

[Badhaggis 40]

You just couldn't come up with a reasonable counter argument, that's why.

The reason I inb4'd "direct chat", well I mentioned WHY I did it.

Besides, last time i checked with a friend (a week ago?) Direct didn't work.

The reason I inb4'd "realism"

Well, it is plain stupid to use realism as an argument in a forum about a GAME.

just don't..

IMO

Side chat = good (with some language/spam restrictions yes)

please, say something reasonable to counter, not this "I won't with you because you instantly derpa derp hurr durr".

Are you agreeing that side chat is a good thing? because then i agree with you, but it's quite hard to make out from your gibberish.

[Capercaillie 16]

The problem with these threads is that they start looking for the solution in the wrong place. Banditry is not a problem, lack of trust is.

Why?

There is no real way to communicate with fellow players to gain that trust. I trust my 1911 more than I trust the direct chat, and when it comes down to the situation where you and me stare in each others in the eye, I'm not gonna start typing "I'm friendly, don't shoot". Your brains will be decorating the wall before you know it.

Ways of showing you are friendly include

-direct chat at an unknown range, with the possibility it doesn't even work. (someone catches you typing = "insert bullet here")

-lowering your weapon which makes you practically say "insert bullet here"

-making the salute, which also makes you lose control of your character --> "insert bullet here"

None of these things make you want to cooperate, because they will most likely end up getting yourself shot.

Side chat allows people to COMMUNICATE with each other before they encounter.

OFC there would be bandits who lure ppl into traps, but hey, if you forget about being careful, well you know what happens..

It just is 100% your own fault when you die...

[Capercaillie 16]

Are you agreeing that side chat is a good thing? because then i agree with you, but it's quite hard to make out from your gibberish.

Yes, I agree with that, sorry but your

"I cannot argue with you because you were inb4 me apparantly" confused me as I thought you were disagreeing, and said so coz you couldn't think of an argument.

I'm apparently not the only one spitting out shit sentences here you know...

But yeah, SIDE CHAT ftw!

[KrystoferRobin 67]

please, say something reasonable to counter, not this "I won't with you because you instantly derpa derp hurr durr".

side chat was taken out due to a lack of AUTHENTICITY not REALISM. Rocket has been very careful, to the point of explaining it when he says it, to use authenticity instead of realism.

Now, if and when we get radios, there could be an established "global" radio channel. Now you can have your "side chat", and remain authentic. People could ignore it, as many of us did the blue chitchat, or they could use it. Having the option would be nice if you're a friendlier motivated player...or less than friendly. Don't want a global chat function? throw away/don't take/tune out/turn off the radio. So many more options with that. I'm sure it could be managed in a way that allows both voice AND text transmissions so our friends without mics/excessively shy folks could utilize it as well.

always on side chat = pants on head retarded

radio comms = possible, interesting alternative

Also, you'll never be taken seriously when you tell someone to offer reasonable rebuttals when you're spewing juvenile internet lingo like a fucking schoolgirl.

Edited July 16, 2012 by KrystoferRobin

[Badhaggis 40]

Awesome :D.

BTW ^ Why the small print?

Edited July 16, 2012 by Badhaggis

[Mosiph420 0]

I like this idea alot better then my idea of giving admins more power to stop bandits. I see the society part of the game impossible anymore due to the fact that shoot on sight is the golden rule in this game. These PvP players have no scope of how far this game can evolve and are limiting it to a basic genre of first/third person shooter. Whilst on the other hand other players would like just the walking dead to contend with. Maybe even have it where battles are set up. Highly impossible though with no Admin powers availabke or no recognition between friend/foe. I agree something should be done about this bandit problem or it will define this game as what it is. A no man's land where hours of hard work can be undone in a moment. If that is the case why continue playing or even buy this. The amount of frustration alone would make me wipe my hard drive of any remains of DayZ

[KrystoferRobin 67]

Awesome :D.

BTW ^ Why the small print?

firefox went retarded and wouldn't post, so I jumped over to chrome. Somewhere between, copy/paste went a bit silly on me.

Edited July 16, 2012 by KrystoferRobin

[herd 69]

+1 for the bandit skin. Bring it back. I will wear it, no jokes :D

[Junos 57]

There are no bandits. There are survivors and there are infected--that's it.

It's a zombie apocalypse. The world is a hostile place. Not knowing who you can trust is part of the experience. Deal with it. That's what makes DayZ DayZ.

We don't need more artificial consequences, magically changing clothes, etc. That makes it a game, rather than the great anti-game it is.

What we need is for the zombies to be so challenging that the only way to survive for a decent amount of time is to team up. It's almost that way now.

As someone said, there are no more laws, no more courts, no more witnesses. It's more wild than the Wild West ever was. As rocket said, every minute you survive is a miracle.

The only real problem is out-of-band communication, which allows people to artificially coordinate against players who aren't in their channel. But this is something that cannot be prevented--it's the nature of things. What are you going to do, send someone to their house to stop them from talking with their buddies on the phone? Besides, it might not even be wise to do so if you could--would you really want to never be able to play with your friends unless you ran into them at random?

Bottom line: stop trying to make DayZ what you think it should be. Stop trying to make it like other games. Enjoy it for what it is. Look at what rocket has accomplished. Don't you trust him?

The world just ended. Adapt.

Edited July 16, 2012 by Junos

[Badhaggis 40]

I though it was the coolest skin in the game TBH, and i imagine some people activly went after the outfit.

Edited July 16, 2012 by Badhaggis

[unclegus 21]

I think the main "problem" with banditry is that there is no common incentive for the survivors. It's not like there is an objective to meet, like in L4D/Zombie Panic! etc., but this is the nature of the game; it's open-ended. If there was some kind of objective, one which necessitated working in a team to achieve, it would result in at least some co-operation between small teams. It would mean that when you're roaming around on your own and you encounter another dude on his own, you might just offer to team up to achieve X instead of just opening up. Maybe even if this is just to get hold of some of the better loot.

Having said that, I haven't been playing that long, so maybe this is already how it is for things like vehicles? But then, once you have them, what next? I guess survival itself is a common objective, but not one that necessitates co-operation.

[moosehugger 1]

assuming rocket deciides skins are the best option

Well how about the opposite than and make people who go x amount of time or what ever without killing someone get their own skin, dress them in robes and flowers in their hair or something. people who don't like bandits having to stand out get what they want, bandits can look like everybody who just spawned on the beach and people would at least be able to identify people not trying to kill others purposefully. Bandits might try to abuse this if they feel like waiting 10 hours or what ever the time is before getting a skin that will only makes it less likely that someone will not shoot you on site.

It can even stick with you through death or wat ever so long as you didn't kill another player. Go ahead and add custom skins for people who hunt bandits too, make them look like Sherri's or something since it makes sense that people trying to be good guys would make it adequately known to others. In RL people where uniforms for a reason, just because zombies are running around doesn't mean we say screw it and all dress the same, people would organize and create makeshift as a simple step towards moving forward our civilization. And than if someone wants to do a heist or something or trick a group of players they can do what they have to dress like a sherriff and trick the folks, so the question of can you trust people is no less prevalent, you'll just know that someone with a skin is less likely to want to kill you since it seems like a lot of work to get a custom skin just to trick one person only to loose that skin. The cost/gain from doing that wouldn't be there for most people wanting to be bandits.

This idea could be expanded to alot of the game, and just let people opt out if they want the default skins since your more rewarding players the ability to show that they have spent a great deal of time focusing on one aspect of the game world rather than punishing them.

U could refine this or expand once we have more systems in game but quick ideas for skins for focusing on different play styles

Sherrif, ratio of play time to pk kills let's you get this skin that way u have to be consistent about it or w/e

Field medic outfit, use x amount of medical supplies on players with similar ratio as above with people helped over certain time.

Some sort of mad max style zombie hunter skin I guess (idk lol) that shows uve saved x amount of people from zombie attacks.

Point is poets badnits don't want to be punished for killing others, fine give skins for doing Other stuff. U see someone without a skin, maybe they are new or started a new character or lost their skin because they where not being consistent with it or w/e the parameters are. Point is most people would not have these skins and thus that make banditry still fair game, and offers a good u incentive to try other ways of play if u really like a new skin or something.

Tl;dr I wrote this on my iPhone :P and reward players for doing other things than being bandits with skins and let bandits keep their boring as fuck default skin if they don't want to be easily identified.

Edited July 16, 2012 by moosehugger

[Pilikia 0]

You need a real incentive, not a skin as a reward. Perhaps something along the line of character-class, but not one that is preselected at spawn. Using first aid as an example. Everyone "knows" basic First Aid. Bandaging ok, even tranfusing ok (but maybe with a 20% failure rate, and perhaps not back up 12000 pts. except over the course of a couple of days). Break a bone, a medic can splint it, but you walk/run slower and if not properly seen by a "doctor", you permanenty are slower/weaker/less stamina. Add eye injuries where you can't see as well, perhaps even limb injuries where you can only shoot with a single-hand.

Find a medical book and after a few days of play you "learn" surgery where you can "fix" bad splints, field tranfusions, eye injuries etc.., . You you have to survive and so your team protects you and you help your team -- or perhaps become valuable to kidnappers(?). The concept can be extended to gunsmiths (yeah, your gun starts jamming after putting 5000 rounds through it), or engine repair. The idea is to recreate the reasons why people work together above and beyond sheer numbers with PvP combat.

[Womble (DayZ) 3]

Hi I defently think you are on the right track about using the skin to resolve problems with the massmurder going on at the moment.

I would even take it further and make Bandits faction in DayZ

This is my suggestion:

1.Players should be able distinquish Peacefull survivors from Bandits. This would help survivors trust eachother and encourage teamplay more.

I suggest using reusing the "Bandit skin" model or something else highly visable through a sniper scope.

2. players know a character with a survivor skin is unable to harm them, they will be more inclined to team up with that person.

I suggest Friendly fire among survivors should be turned OFF. DON'T PANIC! Just keep reading.

3. Players should be able to turn into "Bandits" at will. This will keep the pvp crowd happy since they will just turn into Bandits and continue to do what they do the best and it will also let players to kill the guy that took the last can of beans.

I suggest implementing an option in a menu or in the inventory that allows the player to change into a Bandit.

Bandits can shoot and kill Survivors and survivors can shoot kill bandits. (friendly fire is ON)

Perhaps the best Mechanic for changing into a bandit would be to move the bandit players to a another team, no idea if rocket can hack arma to do this, but i'm not a game designer so i'll let him figure that out.

Since bandits and Survivors are on diffrent teams, friendlyfire would no longer apply.

Once a players have joined RED team, they cannot go back to blue

Everyone will be able to see that you are a killer and you are going to get shot at if they see you. ( That is the consequence of being a killer )

This game mechanic would let people kill those they think worthy of a bullet, and give peacefull survivors a chance to trust eachother (a little) more.

It will perhaps also give people reason to pause and think..."Is this guy really worth getting bandit status over".

It could also open the door to interesting mechanics/gameplay.

Here is a few from the top of my head:

- Disguises that gives you the opposite teams skin.

- Bandit status after seriuos theft

- Redemption back to survivor status when certain criteria is met (time past and/or action taken

- Bandit only items like: bandana & sombrero" (It's all about hats, you know! ;) )

- The ability to see how many players are on each team when you log in.

ANYWAY, this is my halfbaked idea. I hope we can have a constructive debate about if this idea would work or not?

[dystopeon 46]

here's the thing, Bandit skin's DID work, probably too well - instead of players embracing their banditry (like myself) - they instead opted to whinge (even though we bandits used to start with CAMO!). There should never have been an option to increase humanity through deeds (humanity farming) only for time waited (pvp aversion) or killing other bandits (infiltration). I've mentioned previously that bandit skins were an essential dyad. I can almost virtually guarantee they will return to this model. It's pretty obvious that the majority of forum dwellers agree with a return to a basic dyad like skin morphing. derp!

[vier0hr 21]

TLTR

[aversionfx 63]

Oh, and this game is DEFINITELY dying out as the following statistic proves

------------------------------------

Players in last 24h: 146,506

------------------------------------

Pretty nice for an alpha/beta stage game. Too bad it is obviously dying out because of the mindless banditry...

One of my favorite things, is when some idiot finds a statistic, and assigns meaningless value to it. And then that idiot comes and posts something like, "this statistic proves X!" without even bothering to understand it.

All that statistic means is less people are playing. Period. That's all it means.

Considering that the overwhelming number of players coming into the game only started playing in the last 2 months (since around E3 and huge word-of-mouth since), I think it would be more accurate to say that the hype is dying down, and the community pool is returning to a state of equilibrium. This can best be attributed to the fact that ARMA simply is not the same kind of FPS that is really popular these days, and so most players get frustrated and quit. Or perhaps it's the fact that DayZ is not about run-and-gun gameplay, and is rather a slower paced, more deliberate survival sim - something that most people would think is neat on paper, but isn't that "fun" to play. Or maybe that DayZ is too challenging.

What that statistic does not mean, is that the game is dying. It just means that less people are playing, for any number of reasons.

[Ultenth 12]

The problem with any anti-bandit or whatever ideas is this simple: People don't seem to care if they die as much anymore. People server hop or change identities too easily.

They know where to go, how to get good weapons and equipment, etc. Death isn't the huge setback it once seemed. And even if it were, people can just respawn, change their character name, move servers, whatever. There is no reputation that you carry with you. I'm not talking reputation like a bandit skin, or whatever else gamey idea people come up with. I'm talking about an actual reputation. Like, people on the server you're on know to watch out for a ghili suit snipe somewhere between Mog and Novy, because you're known to camp out there and kill people headed between Stary and Electro. Like a bandit who stays in business in a real situation would become known. They would be aware of where you worked, and perhaps even your name or how you worked.

But because it's all too easy to just change your name, face, server, and die and restart, you always have the advantage of anonymity, no one ever finds the dead bodies you leave behind and tells other survivors about them. Also, because if you know the tricks it's impossible to hunt down a well-played bandit who is willing to exploit the system, it's impossible to really avenge a friend by killing the bandit that killed him etc. He can just DC, or better yet DC then ghost behind you and shoot you too. Until exploits like that and server hopping for loot are fixed, there is really no reason not to be a bandit yourself and shoot everyone on sight. It's unfortunate, but until the game's software reaches the next level of alpha, this is just going to be an unavoidable problem for now.

[agonizingnose 0]

Wow, love it brah, love it...