Suicide Pill (or suitable replacement)

[jonzay 2]

I recently read that in the upcoming 1.7.2.4 update, the respawn menu option will no longer kill the player (and will instead do nothing or be otherwise unavailable).

If that is to intentionally stop players from being able to suicide (without any realistic means to do so) then this post is useless and should be ignored.

However, if it is because players have been accidentally hitting it while attempting to click on other menu options, I have a solution.

A new toolbelt item (which I'll refer to as a suicide pill, although it would be any suitable item as rocket sees fit) which all players spawn with. When right clicked and used, brings up a prompt to confirm that the player really wishes to commit suicide. Once confirmed, the item deals massive damage to the player, enough to guarantee a death. I've been informed that it's pretty easy to script confirmation prompts into scripted items, so there should not be any accidental uses of the item. I also don't see any reason for the player to be able to drop the item, but I'm not sure if it's possible to prevent players from dropping items.

To prevent player spawn hopping (if that is a reason to prevent suiciding, although players will just run into a group of zombies anyway), a simple timer can be put into place. Since the game already tracks how long you have survived for (how else would we have the "average lifespan" statistic on the main day z website), it would be reasonably easy to require the player to have been alive for X minutes (30? 60?) before allowing use of the suicide pill, perhaps with some flavour message of the player not having given up hope of survival yet.

Any thoughts?

[Helsing 19]

go jump off a lighthouse

[krtshv 362]

Run into a horde of zombies, start shooting randomly, throw a grenade at your feet, stop eating, stop drinking, run to Cherno..

There are plenty of ways to get yourself killed.

[jonzay 2]

There are plenty of ways to get yourself killed.

Sometimes you'll be in the middle of nowhere, with no zombies around, and a broken leg. I'm not saying this is the only reason it's needed, but I've seen quite a few people complaining about the loss of a suicide function.

Edited July 26, 2012 by Jonzay

[Grimlok (DayZ) 134]

The point of the game is to survive...not use a suicide pill. This has got to be one of the dumbest ideas ever.

[Rokor Fenix 143]

The point of the game is to survive...not use a suicide pill. This has got to be one of the dumbest ideas ever.

Well, since Rocket is making it so you can't respawn, people are trying to add a workaround. Which is the exact same as a respawn button.

[kyle939 20]

Esc>Respawn (dead)

[dev0 19]

I see where this is coming from and in fact Dean stated on an interview that he is thinking about allowing you to commit suicide with your gun. He was concerned about how this would affect the games rating though should it be released stand alone.

@kyle: Dean is going to remove/thinks about removing the respawn button in an upcoming patch.

Edited July 27, 2012 by dev0

[Beanus 61]

How about, click Respawn and it shall say, "Do you want to respawn? Yes No"

[dev0 19]

I think the whole point of evaluating to disable respawning is to prevent spawn location selection. Yes, you will still be able to run into a horde of zombies, or into Cherno, or jump from a lighthouse, but all of this will take considerably more time than simply hitting Escape -> Respawn. And they are in fact emergent gameplay to some degree. The only problem though in fact is, what is if you run through a forest, far off from any town, fall from a rock and break your leg without having morphine with you. You are stuck. You will have to crawl to the next location providing you the means for suicide which might take dozens of minutes if not hours. For this reason you could add the option to kill yourself with your gun. Most players, except the very freshly spawned ones, will have access to a firearm most of the time anyway. And that freshly spawned players don't have the means to suicide is what this is all about.