Making use of the Humanity System

[Domakk 0]

My Suggestion fort he use of the Humanity system

I am no programmer myself and I’m not sure if I understand the Loot and Zombiespawning correctly but I think when a player approaches a town he activates the Zombie and Loot spawning. At least I often saw Zombies suddenly appear near towns when I approached.

My Idea to make use of the humanity system would be:

When a Player approaches a town his humanity is taken into account when calculating the quality and/or quanitity of the spawning loot.

Example: When a Player with high humanity approaches, the loot of a barn has a slightly higher chance to contain large weapons and food/drink while the Player with low (or very negative values of humanity) has a slightly higher chance to spawn small weapons and food/drink.

I don’t mean a bandit would only find tin cans and a friendly survivor finds shitloads of weapons and supplies, the chances should only be slightly adjusted, noticeable but not frustrating for bandits.

Of course there may be some downsides to this system, for example when a bandit approaches a town and lower quality loot spawns, the town will be full of it until every player in the vicinity is gone and the system can de-spawn the loot and Zombies.

This way a good player is slightly rewarded for his good behaviour and bandits only have a little downside which is made up by their playing style because they will find everything necessary in towns (food, drink, weapons) but if they want a higher chance of getting good stuff fast they go hunt survivors.

Lastly my 2cents about bandits:

In a post apocalyptic real life szenario you would not go on a killing spree. First of all you grew up in a society with a lot of people helping each other, there were always other people around and if you had proper education you were always taught to respect other people and not do them any harm. In real life you would be happy and reliefed to find other survivors so you can build a group to better get your hands on necessary stuff like food, clothing, shelter and things like soap, medicine etc. You would be a complete and utter fool to just shoot everybody on sight like and loot their corpse like Gollum on a rampage whispering „My precioussss beansssss“

I’m not against the idea of having bandits in the game, I don’t want them to be punished, I just want the good (roleplaying if you will) survivors the be rewarded, just a little bit.

[Leechman 8]

I disagree with this idea completely.

You're restricting freedom of player choice by unfairly impacting a section of the playerbase. Also, your system fails to account for players who accidentally get forced into a low humanity state as well as those who wish to switch from low humanity to high humanity.

Saying what would happen in a scenario such as this is naive. Just because you believe you would prefer co-operation does not mean all others would and such reasoning is poor.

[Domakk 0]

Read my suggestion again and you may notice that I used words like "slightly" and I made an example pointing out that this change would not be drastic.

And don't worry about my reasoning, I am able to distinguish between real life and a computer game. If you are really a sociopath that would like to go on lone ranger tour through a zombie infested wasteland go ahead, humanity would be lost if everybody thought this way :)

edit: Nevertheless thanks for your reply and criticism.

[Leechman 8]

I saw the word slightly the first time. The fact that there would be any effect at all is a bad thing. You're distinguishing one playstyle as 'good' and another as 'bad'. You say you don't want to punish bandits. But by effectively rewarding one playstyle over another, regardless of the degree to which it is done, you ARE punishing them.

You brought up real life, and that what I was referring to. I'm not saying that everyone would choose the same option. Instead, try and realise that for many, open, free-handed co-operation would not be ideal, or even a possible line of behaviour. I was pointing out the fallacies in relating your idea to real life.

[Domakk 0]

Thanks for explaining this, seems like I didn't really get your point at first.

I am just afraid of this great mod with it's motto "This is DayZ. This is your story" to degrade to a deathmatch with the new motto "This is DayZ. Just shoot everything. We have Zombies btw."

[O'Malley 3]

I'm hoping that future updates will bring in items and things that make it beneficial for players to co-operate. Fixing cars together is a current example, as it is a task often too hard for just one person to complete. Having items that are best used on other people (defribulators maybe), for example, could help with this. This will make it co-operative play more viable than I currently feel it is, without having arbitary rule sets forcing it on people.

This system will also rewards groups of bandits, which I think is fine. My main problem at the moment is letting someone into your group, and then having them backstab you after gaining your trust for a while. They should still be able to do that, and reap the benefits of your loot, but they should also lose more than they currently do.

[Leechman 8]

It's not nearly as bad as you think.

There are currently 63356 characters alive, out of which there are 6631 bandits. Survivors severely outnumber bandits.

If you have a bad experience with a bandit there are things you can do. You can try get revenge and hunt them down. You can change your play style (instead of hanging around the coast, go north; instead of always hitting the NW airfield, try checking out deer stands). You can switch servers. You can become a bandit yourself.

There are only 2 things which can act as a 'solution' to the bandit 'problem':

1. People change their attitudes about the game, as well as how they perceive other players and the decision-making process

2. Zombies

If you want to think up ideas about this topic, try and think how you can change 2 to impact on 1.

[Domakk 0]

Instead of changing the loot quality/quantity you could also increase the number of zombies a bandit spawns. Slightly of course ;)

[Leechman 8]

garrrrrr

Don't punish peoples decision-making after they've made the decision.

Challenge their decision-making BEFORE they make the decision.

See what I mean http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1716

[Domakk 0]

This is still alpha, the humanity rating could be reset multiple times before this mod hits release or even before it gets to be a beta.

[Leechman 8]

I'm not quite sure what that's in reference to. lol

[raviool 2]

your reward for being good is whatever others give you for being good. the punishment for being bad is whatever others do to you when they hear of your bad reputation. there should never be any kind of effect forced on you by the game for playing it your way.

[Serova (DayZ) 174]

I'm sorry but players shouldnt be punished because of a path they choose. Also for people who have -20k humanity I doubt they'll ever get a positive humanity again. So, no.

[Domakk 0]

your reward for being good is whatever others give you for being good. the punishment for being bad is whatever others do to you when they hear of your bad reputation. there should never be any kind of effect forced on you by the game for playing it your way.

With the bandit skins removed no one ever hears of your bad reputation or is able to see it. I know that in reality this would be the same but we are talking about a game that needs balancing in order to favor cooperative gameplay.

To clarify my original post: there is a loot table containing the percentage of loot spawning, my idea was to lower or raise this percentage from (example) 5% to 6% for a good player (from 3000 Humanity up) or to lower it from 5% to 4% for a bandit (less than -5000 Humanity).

In game it would be barely noticeable, but you would at least know that being cooperative gives you a small advantage.

PS: you don't have to be sorry for having an opinion of your own ;)

[raviool 2]

youre implying this is a coop gamemode, its not. its a ffa gamemode. whether you cooperate or not is your free choice.

[ezdaroth 1]

There should never be any artificial advantages or disadvantages based on your playstyle, nor should there be any decisions that force you to a certain playstyle.

It should be authentic experience, get as close to "real-life" scenario as possible. You are in the middle of nowhere, there's zombies, there's other people, you must survive by any means necessary.

Zombies create a context for the game and are a nice element, but they are predictable and you could easily survive a lifetime in Day Z against zombies.

Player interaction is what makes the game unique, interesting and unpredictable. Seeing a player is an intense key moment in the game.

You don't know anything about the player and he doesn't know anything about you.

If you shoot him, you take the risk of alerting zombies or other players who might kill you, but you might also get supplies and weapons that help you survive.

If you approach him, you take the risk of him shooting you right there, or backstabbing you in the long run, but might also get a friend who is more valuable than any weapon and will help you survive.

If you simply hide from the player, you don't get a friend and you don't get supplies, which might be the reason you die in the long run, but might also save you from death right now.

This is natural risk evaluation, there's no artificial gameplay elements effecting your decision.

As soon as you put in bandit skins to mark players who have killed other players, you take the risk evaluation away or simplify it by a huge factor. "The game tells me that player killed someone, I won't trust him."

If you make the humanity effect drop rates even a little, you still screw up the natural risk evaluation. You introduce the droprate factor, which has an impact on the decision. Someone might not take the risk of shooting someone just because he doesn't want a loot disadvantage.

Mechanics like this aren't the way to fix anything in this game. If you try to avoid the game from degrading to a DM at the beach by introducing safe-zones, player skins, loot factors and other artificial mechanics, you take the beauty and immersion out of the game.

You need to look into why it happens and how it can be fixed in a way that makes sense, doesn't restrict players and doesn't break the immersion. It's hard, but essential.