Remove obstacles to cooperation

[dunkhan 8]

Please forgive me if all these ideas have been posted already, there are like 1000 threads here. I like to think this post has some new information and perspectives to offer but if it doesn't I will totally understand if the moderators want to move/merge/delete/lock it.

I have been trying to set up some stranger group cooperation framework, obviously sandbox player based as intended. There are a number of major obstacles to this. I realise that many of these cannot simply be fixed as they are vastly technical and/or come under the scope of the engine and not the mod. Nevertheless for completeness I am listing them all.

Player appearance: All players look pretty much the same, if I can't recognise my freinds and distinguish them from my enemies I can't build any kind of community. Some servers have name tags on mouse over but this sucks as well because it negates hiding and cover and generally ruins immersion. My proposed solution would be giving players the ability to attach large coloured dots to other players. You could only see dots you yourself had placed and not those placed by others. So I could tag all my friends in blue and anyone who tries to kill me with red and then I can recognise instantly who is who. There are many other possible solutions.

Server stability: This one is pretty self explanatory. I posted in my thread in the survivor HQ 'I will be on server ' Then had to edit it again and again as the servers encountered their various issues. My post ended up looking like this "Edit: NY2 was having major lag problems so I moved to virginia2, which then went offline so then I went to virginia 4, and after a while had to move to seattle."

Communication: In an ideal world direct chat would be sufficient. A lot of people don't have microphones, a lot of people don't have the beta patch, a lot of people are too shy, a lot of people just don't want to communicate. If someone comes up to me, how can I work out if they are heading over to my outpost as advertised to cooperate with me, or are just wandering around. I got shot for the contents of my backpack the other day, while at the same moment I was trying to tell the guy about the cool stuff in my bag and how he should just help himself if he wants it.

Those are the big three. It is all very well to call this game a sandbox experiment to see how people will act, but in a world where you can't recognise others, you cant communicate with them, and you can't rely on the stability of reality... well that experiment is a bit redundant.

[dunkhan 8]

Hmm not a single comment. To me this is absolutely the most important list of things that break cooperation. I also know that a lot of people want to encourage cooperation. No one wants to discuss these things?

[daedrick 90]

Skins are coming soon, probably after he have tweaked the weather system which is a complete mess right now.

Other than that, the only obstacle I see is communication, and we have to wait for BIS to release the official patch so everybody have it and direct chat works again.

You said a lot about the problem, but you didn't suggest many fixes. I dont personnaly like your dot system and the lootable cloth/skins will fix that to an extent... so thats that.

[dunkhan 8]

Thanks for your input. A few comments though:

Player clothing as loot will not solve the problem unless a) people spawn with a random set of it and b) there is enough different clothing options to make player recognition possible in most cases. Given the hash collision problem this means on a 50 person server you will have to have hundreds of possible skins.

Chat and BIS patch, yeah that would be good. It still doesn't 100% solve the problem but it at least moves it to being a player issue, ie some people don't have microphones or just suck at communication.

"You said a lot about the problem, but you didn't suggest many fixes." If you can get me a copy of the source for both ArmA and the mod I will try to investigate solutions. Till then I will stick to outlining the problems.

"I dont personnaly like your dot system" Any comment as to why? It was just an example system so if your problem is with the dots themselves then it is not a dealbreaker. The point was when I see someone irl, I remember their face, and if I see them again I go 'hey it's that guy'. I was trying to envision a way of simulating this. Having some way of marking a player in a way that can be seen from a distance of say 30 meters, and maybe only from the front, would do that nicely and should not be terribly hard to implement.