Groups/Squads: A way to prevent KOS

[Seioch 1]

Forgive me if this idea has already been posted, or if this is already in ARMA2 and no one seems to use it.

In case of short patience, scroll down to yellow bolded text.

In Battlefield games, there is an option for you to join a "squad", which means that you are in direct voice/text communication with another band of up to 8 other players. This allows you to directly communicate with ONLY those people without having to listen into the cacophony of the all chat.

Here's my idea for DayZ: A modified form of that system.

By pressing a button, you are able to "create" or "join" a squad, and customize a name for it. Say, for example, I created a squad called "Seioch's Team" upon spawning into Elektro. Anyone in the server can see that I'm in a squad, that there is 1/8 people in that squad, and that it is open for anyone to join. I, being the creator, have the power to evict people from the squad, ban people from the squad, and password it in case that I want to have a private squad. In addition, to prevent "surfing" between squads as a means of locating targets, there is a time limit

If you join a squad, you are able to use text based communications (without range limits, so I can chat to a person in Berezino if I were in Kamenka) and voice communications at an increased range. This chat is, of course, only observable to the members of the squad only.

The point of this system is to encourage people to join up into groups of survivors or roving bands of bandits. Solo players, bandits or survivors, will have to squad up unless they wish to be outnumbered in every player encounter. Grouping up will also make the lives of ghilie suit snipers harder as they now have to take out more targets in order to make a "clean" kill, not to mention other members of that squad will be out in force to look for the assailant. Also, new players won't have to be shot on sight if they're part of your squad, and if they shoot you on sight, you know who shot you and then you can evict them from your squad, or, if you feel particularly evil, post here on dayZ forums their in game name and player ID and condemn them to perpetual condemnation as a traitor.

I'm open to suggestions too. Feel free to leave comments or questions. Trolling and flaming will be met with rolling eyes.

[Bash Arkin 266]

I both like, and dislike this idea. I'm conflicted.

[baz (DayZ) 19]

I don't like the idea of everyone being "encouraged" to join up. The desire of joining up should be the only reason to join up.

I'm starting an anti-KoS experiment. What I do is just use my mic and communicate with other players, especially players near the coast that look like they just spawned. I ask them if they need anything and if I can share, I do. I think just being a good samaritan will change the current mindset of shoot first, ask questions later.

However, if radios are implemented, I think this idea may be useful for longer distance communication... By the way, how would you trust some random person that joins your group? Or why should you trust the person that started a group?

[Grackel 1]

I would like this as a way of IFF on my own counterparts playing. I dont know if this would include some sort of mouse over color change to know people that are friendlies as opposed to how other players look when moused over. Not that I can mouse over people in real life...

[Seioch 1]

By the way, how would you trust some random person that joins your group?  Or why should you trust the person that started a group?

If someone random joins the group, they can text chat you to say... meet up 1 km north of Cherno. Once you two are fairly close, you can voice chat to get a feel for the other person's credibility and honesty. If the squad host shoots you, you leave the squad, join another one, and spread the news that so-and-so a lying asshole. If you are the leader and you see the other dude shoot at you, evict him, hopefully kill him, and spread the news that he's a lying asshole.

[jay.pis 32]

Why not just look for people out of game and form a group/squad?

That's what I did and now I'm in a 4 man group.

Edited July 23, 2012 by jay.pis

[alderous (DayZ) 16]

As far as I know, things look like this (but my knowledge is kinda outdated as its comes from original OFP:CWC):

The groups exist in Arma and there is a group channel (and in-game voip). Moreover if you switch to a group channel (green one) your marks and notes placed on the map are only visible to your group members. So OP proposal regarding communication is doable.

Leader of the group can give an orders in example: to board the vehicle, who have to be engaged or where some group members should go. He can also easily identify who is who, but other group members can't. Since all survivors are technicaly on the same side, in-game enemies reporting won't work (not sure about that)

Actually everyone in dayZ is in group, but its just a single person group (in terms of game mechanics).

Adding people to group could be done fairly easy. For example player could use action from action menu or even better an item (walkie-talkie?) to run script which add to his group single closest player (unfortunatly this guy have no choice in that matter - no agree/refuse popup) thus creating two persons group leaded by him. Repeat this few times and you would get larger group (no more then 12 ppl though). Leaving group should be also easy - if u are in group right clicking on item would give u action "leave group".

Forced removal of ppl from the group by the leader might be harder to implement - I dont know if there is a way to pass information about which member of the group is currently selected by leader - if there is then there is no problem.

Of course all those problems can be avoided if some sort of group menu can be created (have no idea about that stuff).

Actually idea that you need walkie-talkie to create group and people who join your group need them too is pretty resonable - while in group (in ArmA) you can communicate over limitless distances.

As for the idea of open (or private) groups you can join while being somewhere else its seems to be very hard to implement, and personaly I dont really like it.