Bandits don't get punished, Survivors do...

[xRoachx 0]

How about make it to where you can get sick from being a around dead bodies a lot? Thatd be realistic and would balance it more

[miqueloz 33]

I'll say it again' date=' Bandits have it too easy. In real life (this game is a brutally realistic simulator, isn't it?) you get an uneasy gut feeling if someone has bad intentions. It's read from how that person talks, looks, moves... and this game has none of that.

[/quote']

Bahahaha. This made me laugh out loud -- just hilarious. Maybe you should offer your services to the Police. They could really use your uneasy gut feelings, I'm sure.

[WalkerDown (DayZ) 296]

This what's the game is about:

Trolling all around > die > repeat it over and over again ... what's the fun? Ruining other experience... or to be exact: laughing at those (so called) hardcore players imporsonating real life behaviors and social schemes. It is a game' date=' you have infinite lifes, ppl are not scared of dying, because they can do it again after a new respawn (a marakov is MORE than enough to kill other plrs with no effort at all and eventually stole their loot).

[/quote']

What's the old saying "One man's meat is another man's poison"? Your pain is his pleasure. That guy obviously enjoys being a murdering douche, but again, as has been said ad nauseum, these kinds of players tend to stick to the two large cities and airport. Avoid those areas and avoid the bandits.

This mod as it stands is fairly simple. If you want a die/spawn/die/spawn deathmatch, head to the cities. If you want to play as a survivor, avoid the cities and stick to barns and small towns.

Maybe you didn't got that i'm full with that guy, not against him. He's exploting the game to take an advantage. He exposes the fact that without rules, in the name of the "realism", you're not going anywhere.. simply because this is a game not the real life, and a game needs a set of rules to be played, that's why it is called "game".

I may list thousands compromises adopted to make this game (sort of) balanced.. in example the vechicles: do you really believe that in real life it would be so hard to find a working vehicle? Maybe the fuel.. not the vehicles itself.. there should be hundreds of working cars all around, but there's only few.. why? Because otherwise this will be transformed into a "racing game", with ppl jumping with those cars up the hills laughing in chat (totally unrealistic). It is a sandbox.. isn't it? So where's all the vehicles? And all the bazookas? And all the helicopters? Planes?

This proves you that you need to "force" ppl to follow certain rules to make the game enjoyable for anyone, and the the bandits behavior is only helping mostly those cod-style players that are not interested into the RPG part of it. Removing the skins is only increasing the problem, since now you don't even have the drawback of being a kill_em_all plr.

[demazi99 1]

Thing is: Right now the game is intended for those who seek to kill everyone on sight. IF you don't do that, you are at a disvantage.

[miqueloz 33]

How are you at a disadvantage? The best thing would be to just avoid other players the best you can. If you start getting fired at, you can just sprint away and lose them in the woods.

The PvP in this game is friggin' epic, though. The zombies are a nice environmental hazard, but the awesome firefights with other, thinking human beings is what makes it good. Especially because those firefights have so much context. You don't just spawn with the same gear in the same area one minute later if you die.

[mastrovara 0]

OMG

There is just one way to deal with bandits!

Either shoot everyone you see or run from them. War is hell, Zombie apocalypse should be at least dangerous.

Did you shoot a poor innocent survivor to defend yourself? Well deal with it: In war 99% of times you don't shoot to Big Bad People but to gentle and good people sent passively there with a purpose based on a who knows what/fake convinction.

[WalkerDown (DayZ) 296]

I just left a server where a guy were asking/spamming in chat to have duels in Devil's Castle, because he get bored of going around the map or camp to snipe random ppl.

Now talk to me about "realism".... lol.

[reuter 120]

"have no honor' date=' integrity or just kill for personal gain."

[/quote']

There is NOTHING wrong with killing for personal gain. Low on Food? Let's kill a survivor then and take his beans. This is what makes DayZ so awesome and it totally serves the idea of surviving.

On the other hand, killing just for fun, is something that totally destroys the gameplay. Roflstomping Noobs at the coast requires also zero skill. It's not that i personally have to deal with this kind of lowlifes. You won't ever find me at Cherno or Elektro. But i have an odd feeling that DayZ eventually turns into a coastal Deathmatch the greater the playerbase becomes.

[Karko (DayZ) 2]

If I see another survivor and I don't shoot, I can guarantee they will attempt to kill me for my NVGs and silenced rifle.

Could I avoid trouble by staying far north? Easily but it'd be a far harder life than hiding in Cherno. Chernogorsk has almost everything I need and the few things it lacks are carried there by the constant traffic through.

[Riemer 23]

Berezino. It is the holy grail of loot, three apartment buildings, 2 black houses, two conveniance stores, and a hospital within pissing distance of each other.

[Karko (DayZ) 2]

Berezino. It is the holy grail of loot' date=' three apartment buildings, 2 black houses, two conveniance stores, and a hospital within pissing distance of each other.

[/quote']

You didn't mention the Military tents.

[SpaceMonkey 2]

Artificial punishments on bandits aren't going to change the social dynamics of the game.

I agree with those who think that the game is becoming a bit too much restricted to 2 options, lone wolf and hermit trekking through the countryside versus serial pvper.

What we miss are more incentives for people to cooperate. In real life there are many benefits in cooperating, starting with the fact that people can only cope with the ugliness of tough situations if they can share their pain and comfort each other. That's obviously completely absent from the game, and quite impossible to render anyway.

But many of those who claim that in this type of situation "it's everyone for themselves" might kid themselves about how they would hold mentally in tough times. I've been around a couple of nasty disasters, from the fire and rescue side, and it's amazing how much people help each other in these cases, and it's also easy to see how tough guys can crumble into helpless beings when they thought they were physically or mentally invulnerable, and it's often not the one that people would have thought to be the tough ones that emerge as the ones really capable of reacting well. But none of that is really relevant as it can't be simulated in game. So there's this big piece in the puzzle that allows cooperation in real life which is missing in DayZ, and I don't see how to what to replace it with.

Maybe sharing items should boost the effects a bit, to start with? A bandage from someone else is a better bandage. Food given by someone else feeds better because of the morale boost. Sharing a fire gives you a better boost than being miserable all alone because the presence of other people keeps you saner.

Maybe not interacting with anyone else should lower your sanity very slowly. If you never trade, never get close to anyone else, then you suffer some penalty. But this would be too restrictive, it would forbid hermits and I don't think it's a good thing to forbid "roles" in a rigid way. Just my 2 cents anyway, it's obviously quite a tricky thing to get things right and balanced with this theme! DayZ does it already 1000 times better than any mod before, don't forget that :)

[walrus2517 27]

Perhaps my experience is 100% unique but as I posted earlier, this mod seems fairly simple to me. If you want a PvP deathmatch for the top gear, head to the 2 cities or the airport and prepare to shoot everyone you see. If you want a zombie apocalypse RPG experience, avoid those areas and live off the land and whatever you can collect from small towns, deer stands, etc. This map is huge and there are only 50 players on most servers. You can avoid all people, bandit skin or not.

I'll add that I always try to cooperate with few folks I come across. Perhaps this makes me unique but I don't see the fun in just shooting at everyone. If they kill me, so be it, I'll respawn and try again, but the half dozen or so direct encounters I've had in my 30+ hours of playing have all been friendly and a couple even resulted in teaming up for a bit.

[animato09 0]

Agreed.

there must be some panelties for bandits.

if game lets people kill anyone just for fun(not to survive),

i call this game gang war. not zombie survival game.

this game does not require character of person playing it

no face, no guiltiness inside it. they kill everyone they meet.

what is this like, 80% of survivors were ex-criminal or something before apocalypse?

[miqueloz 33]

Punishing bandits is a very game-y mechanic while rocket has said he wants Day Z to be an "anti-game" and extremely cruel. There isn't supposed to be "balance."

There are also no goals in the game except to survive. And no right or wrong ways to play. Don't like people shooting you? Tough. Doesn't mean you're in the right and they aren't.

[SpaceMonkey 2]

On the other hand Rocket also said he didn't want it to turn into a simple constant deathmatch.

Having said that, I agree with Walrus anyway, you only have to go away from the main cities and it's not a death match arena. I got some great cooperation happening, and I also got shot while trying to cooperate, but I didn't care - my goal is not so much to accumulate gear and survive forever, so I prefer to take some risks to lose my current character rather than live like an hermit for hours. If I die, I take a break from the game and come back when I have a new idea about something to experiment with or a new place to explore...

[O'Malley 3]

What we miss are more incentives for people to cooperate. In real life there are many benefits in cooperating' date=' starting with the fact that people can only cope with the ugliness of tough situations if they can share their pain and comfort each other. That's obviously completely absent from the game, and quite impossible to render anyway.

[/quote']

This is exactly what I came here to write. In my opinion, there shouldn't be two distinct camps between 'Bandit' and 'Survivor'. Bandit's should not be punished or rewarded any more than survivors. What there needs to be is more incentive to co-operate. And yes, that includes two bandits getting together to co-operate and live a life of banditry.

Bandits are not bad for the game, they add tension and danger and intelligent opponents. The thing that I think is bad for the game is the 'shoot first' policy. Shooting first gives far too many benefits, because at the moment, co-operating with a stranger is just far too risky. If both players could get more mutual benefit from co-operation we may see more people take the risk to actual engage with others, rather than just shoot on sight.

If bandaging another person was far more beneficial, than you might not shoot a person to get their beans. If feeding someone else beans was more beneficial than eating your own, you would stick with them. If there was a risk of destroying some of a person's gear when shooting them, you might prefer trade rather than robbery. Going about this well I imagine would be incredibly difficult, as you don't want to punish lone-wolfing or hermitry (like many insanity ideas seem to do). But if we can make co-operative behaviour more rewarding, but within reason, and keeping it realistic, it would hopefully better the game.

[leblackdragon 5]

What there needs to be is more incentive to co-operate. And yes' date=' that includes two bandits getting together to co-operate and live a life of banditry.[/quote']

Nice! That's another way of looking at it. Rewarding instead of punishing would work too. You could build a really nice 'humanity' system around this

[grandblaarg 6]

how about if bandits become more attractive to zombies ,

a smell of death if you will,

increasing the range in which zombies can detect them.

[BigMorgan (DayZ) 3]

The boost from cooperation is simple: you have a better chance of survival. When a new player joins our group on teamspeak and can rendezvous with us in the field they get food, water, medical supplies, and weaponry.

I think that there's no need to give us well-organized players, who have been playing Arma 2 for years already and know Chernarus like our own hometowns, any further advantage. This mod, like most FPS games, is a lot easier if you play with the same people again and again on VOIP.

Don't need to game it up with "sharing bonuses" and stuff.

[ComboBreaker 9]

Great OP,well thought and honest.I dont understand why this thread is not 5/5.

I fully agree with you : I think that bandits are beneficial to this game(and in fact,it's major part,as it adds so much tension and paranoya) but when it comes to actual gameplay beeing a bandit is much more easy than beeing a survivor.

Facial expressions,yes.Body shaking(does not affect aim,purely cosmetic),yes.Something that can be recognized only up close or using optics/binoculars - yes.

What I'd like to add to your idea : do not make a penalty for beeing a bandit - add penalty(which actually affect aim and such) for brainlessly killing everyone you see - killing too many players(bandits or not) in a short ammount of time MUST be punished,as it surely was not done for looting or in self defence - its just someone on pointless killing spree.

I like how people scream about realism when it comes to pointing out via skins who is who, but they ignore the fact that noone would be able to kill everyone he sees and stay completely sane and just chill out without any consequences.

Just an example if there was some sort of penalty.

Imagine if a bandit wanted to get someone's gear - but he killed someone before in self defence - he'd be forced to rob(yeah,without killing) using microphone,tactic and teamwork.Which would add roleplay and tension and spice things up.

[Xrated 2]

u guys seem to think badits have it so ez.this is not true seeing how everyone shoots u on sight basicly u vs everyone else.

[Zoop 343]

Not being sure whether you should trust people or not is part of the appeal of the game. Complaining because you can't tell a survivor from a bandit is really silly.

---

What I'd like to add to your idea : do not make a penalty for beeing a bandit - add penalty(which actually affect aim and such) for brainlessly killing everyone you see - killing too many players(bandits or not) in a short ammount of time MUST be punished' date='as it surely was not done for looting or in self defence - its just someone on pointless killing spree.[/quote']

This is perhaps the dumbest idea ever. Banditry is all about being greedy. If I'm being a bandit, and I spot large groups of players, and there is even any chance I'll be able to kill them, I will. I want their stuff.

[Suicide Mouse 50]

Great OP' date='well thought and honest.I dont understand why this thread is not 5/5.

I fully agree with you : I think that bandits are beneficial to this game(and in fact,it's major part,as it adds so much tension and paranoya) but when it comes to actual gameplay beeing a bandit is much more easy than beeing a survivor.

Facial expressions,yes.Body shaking(does not affect aim,purely cosmetic),yes.Something that can be recognized only up close or using optics/binoculars - yes.

What I'd like to add to your idea : do not make a penalty for beeing a bandit - add penalty(which actually affect aim and such) for brainlessly killing everyone you see - killing too many players(bandits or not) in a short ammount of time MUST be punished,as it surely was not done for looting or in self defence - its just someone on pointless killing spree.

I like how people scream about realism when it comes to pointing out via skins who is who, but they ignore the fact that noone would be able to kill everyone he sees and stay completely sane and just chill out without any consequences.

[/quote']

It is exactly what I've mentioned in my thread on the suggestion forum.

People forget that killing isn't easy and isn't casual in real life and that normal humans display physical and mental effects after killing.

[StrayWolf 1]

The bottom line of this thread is that 1) people cannot tell the difference between friendlies and survivors (question-can you do this in RL...?)

2) lack of an incentive to cooperate in-game (again, how quickly can this be established in RL?).

As the game stands right now, it is far easier to be a bandit and take what you want from another player than remain lonewolf looking for loot. Of course, the most difficult aspect for a bandit is to locate prey and take them out. Its like hunting.

Personally, I do not think that the Arma engine has the necessary tools to take the game where it needs to go. Also, I don't think that young teens - or 12 year old playing the game - have the maturity level to deal with these sorts of situations. For them - since they can respawn there is ZERO negative results. I think that the loot tables need to be randomized and the initial spawn pack needs to be randomized. It needs to HURT and badly whenever you respawn.

In another thread - I recommended that players spawn with random items in their pack. Sometimes they would be 'ok' with ammo, but no food. Other times no food but plenty of water. This will cause the players to assess their initial missions. Couple this with random loot - meaning, quantities are randomized and locations are randomized and you have an entirely different situation. It'll no longer be - I run to the NW AF and pick up all the best weapons that I need. I go to this house or barn and I can get this (insert item here).

In my opinion - THIS - is the only way to penalize risk and make it an incentive to cooperate. But cooperation between players comes from trust and that will only come from playing with people that you know in RL. An annonymous player avatar in a virtual world has ZERO value to me. So...how do you create value...? That's the question...