The Moral Effect Theory v2.0

[Suicide Mouse 50]

Yeah I get what you are saying. Whatever happens has to be a negative experience for someone like me that never player kills unless it's self defence' date=' but a positive experience for someone that runs around murdering everyone?

[/quote']

Exaclty. It's going to be fucking hard to come up anything, but rocket suggested the thread should go on, because he wants to see all of the sides talking about consequences of actions.

Unfortunately the "leave the bandeets alone" guys are stuck in the start. Discussion evolve, guise. They gain depth as more and more people ellaborate their ideas.

Get that, or you'll force me to edit my original post an remove everything, because you can't get past it.

[terrvik 2409]

First of all I think we should leave this whole Bandit or Survivor thing behind. There should'n exist such a thing. Everyone is a survivor. It should just be about how you choose to survive.

We all agree that no one should ever be punished per say for playing the game a certain way (other then natural punishments like say... dying :)) so let's move on and discuss ways to improve the game instead of just arguing about semantics. :P

I'm still convinced that the best way to solve a lot of the problems is to make the world a more dangerous place in itself. You should evaluate every possibility and what suits you best. Going solo? Fine, you won't draw as much attention, but you're going to have trouble if you screw up. Going with a group? Fine, you are now a much more attractive target but might be safer.

[deadbolt (DayZ) 10]

hmm in a way bandit skin could be considered a punishment, just not one that really made it more difficult to kill people (unless they see you first)

[Kaw 23]

First of all I think we should leave this whole Bandit or Survivor thing behind. There should'n exist such a thing. Everyone is a survivor. It should just be about how you choose to survive.

We all agree that no one should ever be punished per say for playing the game a certain way (other then natural punishments like say... dying :)) so let's move on and discuss ways to improve the game instead of just arguing about semantics. :P

I'm still convinced that the best way to solve a lot of the problems is to make the world a more dangerous place in itself. You should evaluate every possibility and what suits you best. Going solo? Fine' date=' you won't draw as much attention, but you're going to have trouble if you screw up. Going with a group? Fine, you are now a much more attractive target but might be safer.

[/quote']

Well said Sir, Well said.

[Suicide Mouse 50]

Maybe if dead players attract zeds like sharks in the water you'd need to think "Do I want zeds sawrming this place before I loot all the houses?".

[Cloth 2]

If we put aside the idea of "punishment" and think instead about benefits and costs it might be helpful.

Killing-on-sight clearly has benefits and costs in-game.

Cooperation clearly has benefits and costs in-game as well.

How well does this cost/benefit relationship create gameplay that people want?

As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, perhaps the game could more accurately depict cooperation and all the myriad benefits of that. For example, if the world is lethal enough, and healing injuries by yourself difficult enough, then people would be more strongly rewarded for sticking together.

This isn't "punishment" but rather an acknowledgment that the current cost/benefit relationship isn't creating the gameplay that is desired.

If an emergent strategy in the game means that cooperation becomes increasingly rare, than an important part of the game is lost - a part of the game that sets Day Z apart from other FPS.

[S0N0S 0]

Could you possibly make a new image with a font that is legible? I don't understand why you would use such a highly stylized font, with that much text, and when the focus is the message, not the image. I apologize if I sound harsh, but I deal with hundreds of lines of code daily and it's much easier to read than this.

EDIT: I am legitimately interested in reading what insight you have to offer, I just take issue with your presentation.

[Suicide Mouse 50]

Could you possibly make a new image with a font that is legible? I don't understand why you would use such a highly stylized font' date=' with that much text, and when the focus is the message, not the image.

I apologize if I sound harsh, but I deal with hundreds of lines of code daily and it's much easier to read than this.

[/quote']

Really? Oh well, I was sure it was legible enough.

I'm a graphical artist, I'm a guy of visuals. I used because of the handwriting feel to it to go along with the texturized background and actual handwriting.

So, yeah, it was based on visual context, I suppose I could have thought about versatility more.

Anyway, it really isn't anything that great that affects the current discussion, it just served to pitch the idea but we pretty much tossed all that aside by now. We're just playing with ideas.

[S0N0S 0]

So, that's a no?

[colosseum 2]

Guys, hasn't it been made perfectly clear by now that no restrictions on bandits are going to be implemented?

I agree that the system is somewhat unrealistic, but after countless threads can't we just forget about it? Rocket has mentioned that humanity will make a come back later on. Wait until that gets implemented before you start complaining.

[Suicide Mouse 50]

So' date=' that's a no?

[/quote']

I'll remove the image and update it altogether. When I do it I'll keep you in mind.

[S0N0S 0]

So' date=' that's a no?

[/quote']

I'll remove the image and update it altogether. When I do it I'll keep you in mind.

Thanks. I'll check back tomorrow.

[TheCaptn (DayZ) 12]

Hey Suicide Mouse, interesting thread, but I like others I have some serious concerns about the reasoning. I've read the OP multiple times, and skimmed a few pages, but I think Lady Kyrah makes the point fairly well in the very first post.

I'd like to get into detail though:

We all know killing is wrong and we are heavily punished for it.

This is essentially the fundamental premise of your idea, but it's demonstrably untrue, which makes the argument that follows unsound.

There is not, and never has been, a moral absolute in any society with regard to killing. Every society establishes conditions under which the taking of another human life is sanctioned, a task which is then undertaken by generally rational and fully-functional members of that society. The professions of Soldiers, Police Officers, Judges/Jurors, Doctors (in some liberal democracies), Intelligence Services, even average citizens acting in self-defense are all granted a limited license by their society to kill another human.

That action isn't automatically punished either. It may be independently judged (and often is), but such judgments will often conclude that the act was acceptable, or in some cases even to be commended.

You cannot even sustain an assertion that the individual must -always- feel morally responsible themselves, despite such independent judgement. Although you try to do that here:

More soldiers on the battlefield experience post-traumatic stress disorder for taking lives than for seeing friends and comrades dying and being mutilated infront of them.

You've made this clear assertion, without presenting any evidence that it's actually true, and linked it to an already unsound argument based on a faulty premise.

Now I don't work in the field, but I do have wide-ranging journal access and can do a literature search as well as the next guy. Your argument that PTSD is related to killing more than any other act doesn't seem to be supported at all...

De Silva, P (1999) 'Cultural aspects of post-traumatic stress disorder'

Friedman, M J (2005) 'Veterans' Mental Health in the Wake of War'

Gould, M; Greenberg, N; Hetherton, J (2007) 'Stigma and the military: Evaluation of a PTSD psychoeducational program'

These all suggest that PTSD is much more closely related to the dramatic psychological impact of shifting from a high-stress culture with one set of sanctions, to a low-stress culture that essentially reverses those sanctions. Many parts of the military experience contribute to the stress; killing people, having people try to kill you, seeing friends killed/injured, seeing non-combatants killed/injured, constant high expectations, regular low resources, etc; but the PTSD seems to be triggered by returning to a civilian culture which has no context for any of those experiences.

But the world of DayZ is the high-stress culture, one that lacks any established norms, and there is no hope of a transition back to a low-stress culture, since that no longer exists. It makes the following even more implausible:

You kill 2 or 3 people and you get nausea and vomits, possibly affecting your aim, making your hand shake.

You keep on killing more 6 people, you occasionally can pass out now.

You kill several people and now can be considered a psychotic individual with violent addiction and now you require medication

This wouldn't even make sense in regard to any current culture, or our Special Forces soldiers would be returning home almost universally sociopathic, while support and supply-chain personnel would hardly exhibit any signs of stress disorders at all. Again this is an assumption you're making based entirely on your original premise, and it just doesn't add up.

Also consider the fact that our characters in the game do not represent the carebear pacifists of our civil, urbanised society (despite what the folks around the Bandit Campfire might think). The zombie apocalypse has already happened. The worst is over, and we're the final few survivors; the ones hardy enough to ride out the storm and reach this point alive. If there was any vomiting and shaking to be done at all, it's entirely fair to suggest that it already took place during the outbreak... You know, back when we presumably had to put down our own friends, family or simple acquaintances when they turned. The sort of things we would have been forced to do just to reach the point we're at now.

I don't think the game can, or should ever try to enforce some arbitrary "balance" in moral or social structure; since doing so presumes that we'd even know what that would look like. We don't.

Lets keep the focus on giving us the tools and resources to survive, while making such survival ever harder, to keep pace with the expanding resources. (i.e. Don't pull a Minecraft, and expand the resource base without ramping up the challenge, because therein lies the slippery-slope to 'casual' gaming)

Leave the process of social and cultural development to the players, except when they're pointing out resource deficiencies that directly impact social conditions, like bandit skins.

[TiiX (DayZ) 0]

I like the idea about this but i don't think it would fit in the game. One thing that could make it better instead of killing just getting worse and worse effects is that after maybe 5 or so kills, you would start adjusting.

Another thing that would be cool is if you aim on someone(when you have 0 murders, a newly respawned survivor) your character slowly starts breathing heavily as if nervous about killing the person aimed at.

This could work to a certain limit but i don't think this whole idea would work very good in DayZ.

[Rakkasan 23]

First of all, I am ex-military, and appreciate the research done about PTSD with the actual sources cited. Well done. Always good to back up what you say with facts and proof.

"Zombie Apocalypse" is not a reality, survival is. Killing is a reality. Killing someone during a survival situation is not immoral, simply because morality is defined differently by different societies. No one knows what they would do in that situation until they are in that situation. I think the issue here in this game is people kill other people simply just because they can. No right or wrong, is considered. No moral decisions are made, just the heat of the moment. It is, in fact, just a game with realism tossed in.

There are a lot of in depth discussions going on with valid points. I think it is not impossible to come up with a solution to make the game mechanics of killing another player viable or not, but it will be hard to satisfy the whole community. One can be killed for the weapon they have, or killed just because. Thats the reality. No one can tell me if the choice I made was right or wrong, because I will interpret what is right or wrong on my own. I think if the global chat is removed, the killing will still be there, but toned down.

From what I noticed here from server to server, is the bragging or the complaining going on across the server. Realistically I would not know if "Jklyde just killed me in Cherno" if I was not in Cherno and standing next to Jklyde or his victim. I would not know anything that was going on anywhere less I heard it or seen it with my own eyes, or another person told me face to face. I would not know who killed me, because I would be dead. The killer would not be able to brag about it either, or proclaim "Umad bro" because I am dead, and nobody would care. This game does not need to be about who killed who, or how many people they killed. It needs to stay true to its nature, to survive. You killed me, or I killed you, that is an intimate moment we shared as we crossed paths, no should know, unless they were there. No stats, no bragging rights to be seen on my screen or leaderboard. Reality is, no one needs to know.

[Donkey (DayZ) 3]

have there been any ideas so far that arent punishments for bandits?

My idea for simply rewarding survival' date=' then taking away that reward if you die, was definitely not meant as a punishment for bandits, or player killers in general. It was simply meant to give people more reason to not die.

The purpose here is to survive. For a bandit, if you are alone and aggressive towards other players all of the time, you'll be seeing a lot more conflict and are more likely to die. That's just the path chosen by a bandit. Nothing wrong with it at all but in order to survive you need to be careful.

For bandits who just player kill for fun (we could maybe label them as murders instead, if we want to label), your chance of survival is even lower, as it would be in reality.

The same rules apply to the survivors who go it alone or team up to survive. The point is that more motivation is needed to continue surviving once you have all of the gear, because once you die you will have lost more than just your gear.

motivation to survive and motivation to kill people is different' date=' i want to survive at all costs, but i will still kill most people i meet

[/quote']

Doesn't matter, there NEEDS to be people like you, who no mind how the stting will change, will still kill anyone. It's a vital part of the game.

It just needs to be contained so not everyone starts doing that because there's nothing to lose in it.

That's perfect. If you want to survive at all costs and also kill everyone you meet you're walking a more dangerous road. If you have the skills to pull it off then great. If someone without the skills tries this then they will probably die (sooner). My idea was to just make this mean something besides, "damn, I lost my gear".

[deadbolt (DayZ) 10]

That's perfect. If you want to survive at all costs and also kill everyone you meet you're walking a more dangerous road. If you have the skills to pull it off then great. If someone without the skills tries this then they will probably die (sooner). My idea was to just make this mean something besides' date=' "damn, I lost my gear".

[/quote']

definately a good stance, appearance for survival time might work well and definately something that could be tested

[scoffield77@gmail.com 192]

Previously in this thread, i posted about how i supported a "mental effect" sickness/shaking kinda of thing.

but as I'm watching suggestions from other people like

http://www.dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=6976 - Players run towns

http://www.dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=6986 - Humans are built for Information exchange - solution to Excessive PKing

and my post:

http://www.dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=6791 - Power Plants and a electric grid

Now I withdraw the statement that I support this. I think if the game was more socialized, more realistic, more dynamic and had more objectives. The game would developed a makeshift government(s) and people working together for bigger goals it would ease up the PvP

Now i don't think this will end loan wolf Bandits or Shoot on sight tactics. I don't want them to end I just don't want everyone to be killing on sight

I'm also not saying there will be only one Gov' if this was implemented. it would start with 50 lone wolfs and they will make small groups, those groups will get bigger, and by the end of the game there will be 1-3 big factions fighting it out with a couple lone wolfs thrown in the mix. Hell there could be 1 faction and then a rebel group break off of it.

So I don't think there is any need for the game to force me how to feel anymore. I believe Teamwork is the answer to Shoot on sight tatics, not dictating how someone should feel.

[Zombie Squirrel 5]

Guys' date=' hasn't it been made perfectly clear by now that no restrictions on bandits are going to be implemented?

I agree that the system is somewhat unrealistic, but after countless threads can't we just forget about it? Rocket has mentioned that humanity will make a come back later on. Wait until that gets implemented before you start complaining.

[/quote']

Ian, if you perhaps haven't noticed, we are not complaining. We are *discussing* (at least most of us, except you it seems). There is a big difference.

Please, anybody who has a oneliner in mind along the lines of "stop punishing bandits", don't post it. It doesn't add anything to the discussion. Post ideas, criticise ideas, but not with stupid oneliners that get repeated *over and over*. Sigh.

[Tehdark 3]

I actually really like this idea. I think a lot of the discourse comes down to how people view the game - how they play it. In my mind, DayZ is a role-playing game, in that, I play a role. I am a survivor in the zombie apocalypse, etc. What I don't personally see it as is ME in Chernarus, though I expect this is exactly how many people play the game.

Personally, some of the most deep, fun, thoughtful and impactful moments in gaming for me are those that explore the characters psyche. I'm sure once I've written this I will think of 20 more better examples, but from off the top of my head, for example, the darkness 2. There is a great sequence in that game in which the main charcter Jackie appears to be loosing his mind. There are great segments wherein he believes he is trapped within a mental institute and what he believed as reality, was actually just a figment of his psychosis. Or how about Amnesia? Or Amnesia Justine (Where you can also choose to murder anyone, though choosing to do so has consequences). Persona 4? Metal Gear solid? They all have excellent representations of the players subconcious.

The point I'm getting at is these representations were fun. They ADDED immersion, they made me even believe even more strongly in the environment in which I was placed. See what I'm trying to get at? People view this as an abstraction from the game, something that would just be an annoyance to play with, I think, done right, it could be the exact opposite.

I agree with a lot of people in the thread where they say the ideas that have been suggested are flawed, vomiting, for example, would be highly annoying and would just interrupt the flow of the game. But what people don't seem to realise is that Mouse has said numerous times that these are just examples, ideas, conversations initiators. He does not necessarily believe they should be added in their current inception. He does however believe that the act of taking ones life should have an effect, and I agree.

I absolutely believe that if you so choose, you should be able to murder anyone you meet. That is actually what makes the game so damn fun, in my opinion anyway - you just never can know. But at the moment, there is 0 consequence for killing people. In fact, I would argue that it is objectively BETTER to kill someone than it is to group up with them / leave them alone. This cant be good. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This idea is not about punishing people, its about adding consequences to your actions, feeling the push back.

You need to incentivise play, but also ultimately, leave it to the player. If a player wants to hide in the woods forever, then he should have this choice. It will have consequences though. Maybe he gets lonely, begins hearing voices, desiring human contact. He begins to loose touch with the real world. It's the players choice, but it has a consequence. Similarly, if a player wishes to kill anyone he meets, he should have this choice, but it should not go without an effect. Maybe he feels guilt, hallucinates about the people he kills, or it could even be the exact opposite, he begins to gain blood-lust and desire more death. I don't think these ideas could actually be implemented within DayZ, but hopefully it illustrates the point I'm trying to make.

DayZ is already ground-breaking in my opinion. But if it successfully emulates the human psyche in a post apocalyptic setting, then it could honestly become something genre-defining.

[TeaLeaf 5]

Okay I've refined my previous idea a bit more, I'd still like the more "hardship breeds cooperation" style ideas to be implemented as well. But this is just an extra really.

The Basics

Essentially put humanity back in and give different effects for low or high humanity that benefit "destructive" and "cooperative" play styles respectively. So characters with high humanity will have a hard time killing others, while characters with low humanity will have a hard time working with them.

You also have a new invisible psychological meter that doesn't really effect gameplay, just changes the tone of the game, called Guilt. I'll explain this a bit later.

Let's say humanity goes from 0 to 2000 with 1000 being the neutral mark. This isn't really a morality meter, it simply measures how well you get on with other humans. I'd like to suggest that humanity is raised by being in close proximity to other survivors, assisting them with first aid and that sort of thing but is lowered by injuring or killing them. You lose more humanity for killing a human you have previously gained humanity from, so if you play with a guy for hours then put a bullet in the back of his head you will lose more humanity than if you had just shot him on sight. Assume that a murder is about 100 humanity lost, while healing someone is about 40 humanity gained.

When humanity is close to 1000, let's say 700 - 1300, this is the game's "getting to know you" period where it has no real effect. If humanity drops below 700 the game starts to consider you anti-social, continued humanity loss will not really effect your character's ability to perform inhumane acts however they will start to find it difficult to be around others. If humanity moves above 1300 the game starts to consider you social and you won't notice any effects unless you suddenly perform an inhumane act.

Low Humanity

The lower your humanity, the harder the game tries to make it to tolerate others. It doesn't impose any "physical" restrictions on you, you can still work with others, but the game will try to make you get less satisfaction out of it than a high humanity player would. The game would do this by applying certain artificial effects that become more potent as your humanity lowers.

It's hard to think of effects the game could put in place for this so please suggest some more, here's what I have so far:

• The breathing sounds of other players get louder and get distorted slightly to become sharper in tone. This is a percentage increase in volume rather than a linear boost, so the effect will only be noticeable if you would usually hear them anyway (can't be used to sound whore).
  
• When players are injured, their pain sounds play more frequently for you and are slightly distorted to be more irritating.
  
• All incoming direct chat messages are delayed slightly.
  
• The game slightly biases the client side orientation of other player's models so it looks like they are aiming closer to you than they actually are.
  

High Humanity

The higher your humanity, the more oppressive the game's atmosphere becomes when you perform inhumane acts. This is done by raising the value of Guilt, which slowly falls over time. Inhumane characters are not affected by Guilt.

Guilt is boosted whenever humanity is lowered for a character above 1300 humanity with a formula that looks something like:

Guilt Increase = Humanity Decrease + (some constant * Old Humanity)

The exact values aren't important but the idea is that the more humane you are, the more you are affected by actually being inhumane. Guilt causes effects similar to the things I mentioned in my previous post, their potency and frequency are directly proportional to Guilt:

For example' date=' there are a number of ambient sounds that put me on edge momentarily when I hear them such as the sound of something bumping a chainlink fence. Making sounds like that more common could actually make the player a little paranoid, rather than actually trying to directly simulate the effects of paranoia. The "music" could also get more oppressive when you are supposed to be depressed, but it should fade out entirely when you have a clean concious. If you go in the options and fiddle with the games music level, it feels much much scarier when it's on but fairy calm when it's off (assuming zombies are not chasing you).

You could do more advanced stuff like occasionally duplicating the sound of the players footsteps if they have been running for a while so it sounds like someone is behind them, but make it stop as soon as they stop moving or at night simulate the sounds of someone sprinting past you panting. I think obvious hallucinations would be pushing it a bit too much and a seasoned player would ignore them, but stuff that is more about the "mood" of the game rather than the actual mechanics is fairly hard to ignore.

[/quote']

[TeaLeaf 5]

Okay I've refined my previous idea a bit more, I'd still like the more "hardship breeds cooperation" style ideas to be implemented as well. But this is just an extra really.

The Basics

Essentially put humanity back in and give different effects for low or high humanity that benefit "destructive" and "cooperative" play styles respectively. So characters with high humanity will have a hard time killing others, while characters with low humanity will have a hard time working with them.

You also have a new invisible psychological meter that doesn't really effect gameplay, just changes the tone of the game, called Guilt. I'll explain this a bit later.

Let's say humanity goes from 0 to 2000 with 1000 being the neutral mark. This isn't really a morality meter, it simply measures how well you get on with other humans. I'd like to suggest that humanity is raised by being in close proximity to other survivors, assisting them with first aid and that sort of thing but is lowered by injuring or killing them. You lose more humanity for killing a human you have previously gained humanity from, so if you play with a guy for hours then put a bullet in the back of his head you will lose more humanity than if you had just shot him on sight. Assume that a murder is about 100 humanity lost, while healing someone is about 40 humanity gained.

When humanity is close to 1000, let's say 700 - 1300, this is the game's "getting to know you" period where it has no real effect. If humanity drops below 700 the game starts to consider you anti-social, continued humanity loss will not really effect your character's ability to perform inhumane acts however they will start to find it difficult to be around others. If humanity moves above 1300 the game starts to consider you social and you won't notice any effects unless you suddenly perform an inhumane act.

Low Humanity

The lower your humanity, the harder the game tries to make it to tolerate others. It doesn't impose any "physical" restrictions on you, you can still work with others, but the game will try to make you get less satisfaction out of it than a high humanity player would. The game would do this by applying certain artificial effects that become more potent as your humanity lowers.

It's hard to think of effects the game could put in place for this so please suggest some more, here's what I have so far:

• The breathing sounds of other players get louder and get distorted slightly to become sharper in tone. This is a percentage increase in volume rather than a linear boost, so the effect will only be noticeable if you would usually hear them anyway (can't be used to sound whore).
  
• When players are injured, their pain sounds play more frequently for you and are slightly distorted to be more irritating.
  
• All incoming direct chat messages are delayed slightly.
  
• The game slightly biases the client side orientation of other player's models so it looks like they are aiming closer to you than they actually are.
  

High Humanity

The higher your humanity, the more oppressive the game's atmosphere becomes when you perform inhumane acts. This is done by raising the value of Guilt, which slowly falls over time. Inhumane characters are not affected by Guilt.

Guilt is boosted whenever humanity is lowered for a character above 1300 humanity. The exact values aren't important but the idea is that the more humane you are, the more you are affected by Guilt. Guilt causes effects similar to the things I mentioned in my previous post, their potency and frequency are directly proportional to Guilt:

For example' date=' there are a number of ambient sounds that put me on edge momentarily when I hear them such as the sound of something bumping a chainlink fence. Making sounds like that more common could actually make the player a little paranoid, rather than actually trying to directly simulate the effects of paranoia. The "music" could also get more oppressive when you are supposed to be depressed, but it should fade out entirely when you have a clean concious. If you go in the options and fiddle with the games music level, it feels much much scarier when it's on but fairy calm when it's off (assuming zombies are not chasing you).

You could do more advanced stuff like occasionally duplicating the sound of the players footsteps if they have been running for a while so it sounds like someone is behind them, but make it stop as soon as they stop moving or at night simulate the sounds of someone sprinting past you panting. I think obvious hallucinations would be pushing it a bit too much and a seasoned player would ignore them, but stuff that is more about the "mood" of the game rather than the actual mechanics is fairly hard to ignore.

[/quote']

Friends: The exception to the rules

I don't believe what I have suggested so far impedes the play style of humane, inhumane or neutral players the way they are used in pubs. The problem arises when you have people that team up with buddies but murder everyone else, I don't really want to damage that playstyle by having the "irritating" effects on for buddies.

Basically just have all humanity gains and negative humanity effects reduce the more time you have spent with a particular character. People you play with every day won't raise your humanity by being around them, but they also won't trigger the same effects that randoms cause.

Hope that all made sense

I know that's a pretty colossal wall of text, but hopefully you get the idea.

[LeYuno (DayZ) 51]

I want to jump in to this discussion myself.

I've read several of the other posts and things more or less come down to the same thing;

- who are we to decide that killing players is wrong, it's the player's decision to do so?

- how do you want to make a player feel bad about something he doesn't regret when playing the game?

I think the most intense idea behind this mod is actually the fact that you get attached to your character once you have been playing for a while to get where you are now. Since the pace of this mod is rather slow, it takes time to get the things you need to survive. The fact that another player can end your life in a split second is something that is nerve wrecking and adds to the emersion. We can use this to our advantage towards players that decide to become player killers just for the sake of it.

Let's face it, there are players that shoot everything just because they want to shoot everything, and are able to do so without repercussion. They mostly don't care about the actual intention of this mod, they just want to kill. This messes with the system and frustrates alot of players that want to get by and enjoy this mod for what it is.

Psychologically, each kill they make is like winning a jackpot in a lottery. In fact, they are being conditioned towards killing other players with positive reinforcement after the kill, in the form of loot.

To counter this would be adding something to the game that negates the positive reinforcement. We need something that makes a killer feel bad about killing other players, through a mechanic ingame that gives a negative feeling. The notion that you can't tell a player what he needs to feel is countered by something he will feel negatively about, and link it to the murders he has been committing. In psychology, this is called classical conditioning (dog of pavlov).

Making it tougher to survive for killers in general can be a way to go, but it should be reversable. If a player kills one too many, and is punished with vomit and fainting for the rest of his game life, he'll not be inclined to play any further. Make it possible to cure, but make it hard, so the player will be conditioned into thinking twice before killing someone, which is the direction we want to go in. This is a case of operant conditioning; where the psyche is changed depending on the environmental situaion he is put in.

Is it worth getting sick all the time over the beans he MIGHT carry? Is it worth killing other players of the annoying experience I will have for a long time?

These are the questions we need to get into the gamer's brains. These are the feelings we need to envoke on players. That's how the psychology behind such a game mechanic could work, and make for a better game experience for all;

- you could still have some very tense situations between players

- you could still survive as a player killer

- you would have to cope with the consequences of being a player killer

- you would be able to cure the consequences although it will be hard

- you will think twice before continuing on your rampage against other players

When players now kill someone they didn't intend to kill, they might feel bad about their deeds. Imagine the fear they will feel if they realise they might just have started a chain reaction which will lead them on a hunt for medicine that is scarcely available. I can tell you now, it will add a whole new layer to the game and it will eventually be the solution to this problem.

[The Killing Joke 43]

To counter this would be adding something to the game that negates the positive reinforcement. We need something that makes a killer feel bad about killing other players' date=' through a mechanic ingame that gives a negative feeling. The notion that you can't tell a player what he needs to feel is countered by something he will feel negatively about, and link it to the murders he has been committing. [b']In psychology, this is called classical conditioning (dog of pavlov).

You can take your whole Clockwork Orange symbolism and go, unless you are going to enable the similar mechanic on people who do not shoot other people, and make their sights shake or their gun drop, with an audible "I can't do it!" because they refuse to take a human life.

You aren't talking about balance. You are talking punishment for an in-game allowable occurrence. Until you have similar effects for those who don't shoot other people, then you cannot arbitrarily enforce rules on a group based upon their play-style.

EDIT: Oh, and to the OP. What you have proposed is a hypothesis, not a theory.

[Tehdark 3]

That's just semantics. Your "punishing" is another man's balance. Though I do partially agree, there should be some effect to your "first kill", perhaps more pronounced the longer a player has survived without killing someone. If a player has gone 2-3 days surviving without killing anyone, then he does so, that should be a pretty significant event.