An improvement to the humanity system

[Synchronicity 2]

Now that bandits are gone, there's not much point to humanity, but Rocket decided to keep it in the game for a reason. I don't know what that reason is - I don't know that HE even knows - but there's a good chance it will come into play again in the future.

Obviously, whatever effect humanity will ultimately have on gameplay will influence how the system works, so all of this is preliminary and I don't propose any changes until we know what the effect will be, but I do want to hear peoples' opinions on my idea.

This proposal is meant as a solution to the problem of being penalized for defending yourself. If someone attacks you and misses, returning fire and killing them will result in a loss to your humanity when it should be they who are punished for firing the first shot. Problem is, there's no easy or reliable way to program the game to recognize who is the aggressor in a conflict. Sometimes it's hard even for us humans.

My idea is to make the loss of humanity for killing dependent on your victim's current humanity. My reasoning behind this is that a person's humanity is essentially a measure of how likely they are to help or hurt someone. High humanity indicates that someone actively tries to help others, as well as actively tries to avoid bloodshed. The chance that you would need to kill someone like that in self-defense is small, so your humanity loss for killing them should be high. Conversely, heinous survivors (formerly bandits) who kill everyone they meet just for sport will provoke people into returning fire on a regular basis. Hardly an act for which they should be punished.

I do not think humanity should ever be gained for killing someone, regardless of their status. At most, the penalty should be zero. Taking a life is sometimes necessary, even justified, but that does not mean it is ever right.

[sirisma 0]

I agree with what you're saying here, and I kinda thought of a system involving that. It's quite simple but makes the game more in-depth I think. Go check it out: http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=5150