DayZ is not a deathmatch and the statistics prove it

[chhopsky 25]

And there lies the problem,people think they can run around the coast like idiots and expect to not be shot.

^ exactly my point. There's a huge difference between 'everyone i meet tries to kill me' and 'everyone i meet tries to kill me while i am raiding a high value target with limited supplies'.

Every time I die is because someone shoots me, only three times I've died by the hands of zeds and I've never died due to starvation so..

*Irony starts*Bandits are so rare that if you find someone he'll never kill you*Aaaaaand it's gone*

I've died from players 30% of the time, 70% zombies. As I get better at the game though, zombies tend to kill me less and less, so that ratio will surely increase. This again will interfere with the statistics as in that case, even though most deaths will be murders, it's not necessarily indicative of the murder rate, and you need to look at the number of bandits.

With the info on the front page you cant make these assumptions especially because of all the bugs that have killed people or resulted in deaths. Then all the bandits that dont last long enough to be registered as bandits (i read somewhere 3 kills makes you a bandit but that could be incorrect). Lets say a bandit has a 50/50 chance of death. They need to make it though three tosses of the coin so to speak just to be registered as a bandit (assuming im right about the 3 kills to be a bandit thing). If someone gets two kills, dies to a zombie or other survivor they're chalked up two survival attempts for others without showing up as a bandit.

You can't necessarily make every assumption and say things are 100%, but you can make a number of reasonable inferences. For example, there's no arguing with survival attempts. That is 100% the number of lives that have been instantiated. There's no arguing with the bandits alive + bandits killed either - that is just plain also the number of those instances that have been used for banditry. Where do you get a 50% chance of dying from? Most battles are lost before the first shot is fired due to effective tactical behaviour. The few times I've been killed by bandits, I've had almost no chance. It stands to reason that people who make a sport of killing other players are better at killing other players because they do it more. I think the chances are much higher that a small number of bandits are killing a large number of people. This would also be something we could pull out of the logged data.

It's also important to make a distinction between a bandit (a person who makes a sport of killing other players) and a murder, which may or may not be in self defence, or accidental. I've witnessed a number of accidental shootings, some blue on blue, others strangers surprising each other. So while we may not be able to hard and fast trust the murder figure, we can trust at least a couple of the others.

Even if you throw all the numbers away and say 'theyre all shit because they can't be trusted' they still imply quite a lot even if we know they aren't accurate. The murder rate is not going to go up from 15% to 100% any time soon because we know people die from zombies, bugs, respawns, glitches etc. I wouldn't want to suggest a margin of error but even if it were massive, +/-15%, we would still only end up with a 30% rate.

To even attempt and bring any legitimacy to your claims you need to try and find a way to estimate these numbers with some kind of reasonable evidence.

1: Estimate how many people died as a result of bugs and pushed up the number of survival attempts.

Not really relevant - point is, not murder.

2: Estimate how many people continually respawned to get a better starting position.

This is interesting because there really aren't many 'great' starting positions. They're all on the coast so they basically all suck. I'd like to see some statistics on how prevalent this is. If we could pull lifespan data then we could definitely do it. The average lifespan is pretty low so I think we guess this may be a statistically relevant number.

3: Estimate how many bandits gets kills without being registered as bandits.

This will be impossible to quantify.

4: Someone suggested the alt f4 problem and how it doesnt register as a murder, estimate that as well.

Why would anyone altF4 if they were dying? Either way, you're right that this muddies things, but I don't see any way this data could be pulled out from what we assume is being logged.

I'm sure you can extend that list but those are the things you have to consider before trying to present statistics, especially on the internet where people like me will pick apart your attempt to bring some reasoning into a debate. Shame you jumped the gun without considering all the variables, thats what really annoys me about people using statistics and is why i never trust them. I havent suggested ways of estimating these stats cause i dont care to put that much thought into it, polls i guess would be the best way cause you need the populations average.

You're right that there are a lot of variables, but all things considered, even if you add in variances for all of those things, it's not going to change 15% into 100%. It's not going to change 3% into 100%. It just isn't. No matter what kind of variance you add in to compensate for player behaviour, it's just not likely that they could be statistically relevant to the tune of 85 or 97%. I'm going to guess that you have never studied any kind of statistics since you suggested 'polls' since polling is incredibly ineffective for trying to deal with this kind of personal experience data. We would get a very good idea of how people feel about it but proving that everyone 'feels' there are bandits everywhere is different from proving that everyone is a bandit, if that makes sense.

The only way to get this data is log trawling and analysis. I'm actually in the process of performing some psych research at the moment regarding video games and immersion and tomorrow when it's posted I'll give you an example on how to capture statistically valid data.

I also actually appreciate your attempts to pick holes in it; all things should be open for questioning and as normal I thoroughly encourage that they be questioned. If you think those things would pollute the front page statistics so badly that they are completely unusable then I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

Everyone is complaining about other people killing anyone they meet; if you want that to change, you need to change YOUR behaviour.

Approach from behind/cover and announce your presence. The best way to earn trust is to give it. You need to show people you've had an opportunity to kill them and you didn't. Don't trust anyone while you're raiding a high-value target, that's just competition for weapons. Don't point your gun at people. Don't hang around the coast like an idiot. Etc etc. There are lots of good simple rules we can follow to show people that we trust them. If most people aren't bandits then everyone else is killing in fear of bandits. This is hilarious because the number of players murdering each other is SO much higher than that of bandits. If those 3% of lives are polluting the servers that much then band together and hunt them. And if it's not then it's just paranoid people with shaky hands. Be the solution!

Edited July 30, 2012 by chhopsky

[dooshbaggalow 4]

^ exactly my point. There's a huge difference between 'everyone i meet tries to kill me' and 'everyone i meet tries to kill me while i am raiding a high value target with limited supplies'.

I've died from players 30% of the time, 70% zombies. As I get better at the game though, zombies tend to kill me less and less, so that ratio will surely increase. This again will interfere with the statistics as in that case, even though most deaths will be murders, it's not necessarily indicative of the murder rate, and you need to look at the number of bandits.

You can't necessarily make every assumption and say things are 100%, but you can make a number of reasonable inferences. For example, there's no arguing with survival attempts. That is 100% the number of lives that have been instantiated. There's no arguing with the bandits alive + bandits killed either - that is just plain also the number of those instances that have been used for banditry. Where do you get a 50% chance of dying from? Most battles are lost before the first shot is fired due to effective tactical behaviour. The few times I've been killed by bandits, I've had almost no chance. It stands to reason that people who make a sport of killing other players are better at killing other players because they do it more. I think the chances are much higher that a small number of bandits are killing a large number of people. This would also be something we could pull out of the logged data.

It's also important to make a distinction between a bandit (a person who makes a sport of killing other players) and a murder, which may or may not be in self defence, or accidental. I've witnessed a number of accidental shootings, some blue on blue, others strangers surprising each other. So while we may not be able to hard and fast trust the murder figure, we can trust at least a couple of the others.

Even if you throw all the numbers away and say 'theyre all shit because they can't be trusted' they still imply quite a lot even if we know they aren't accurate. The murder rate is not going to go up from 15% to 100% any time soon because we know people die from zombies, bugs, respawns, glitches etc. I wouldn't want to suggest a margin of error but even if it were massive, +/-15%, we would still only end up with a 30% rate.

Not really relevant - point is, not murder.

This is interesting because there really aren't many 'great' starting positions. They're all on the coast so they basically all suck. I'd like to see some statistics on how prevalent this is. If we could pull lifespan data then we could definitely do it. The average lifespan is pretty low so I think we guess this may be a statistically relevant number.

This will be impossible to quantify.

Why would anyone altF4 if they were dying? Either way, you're right that this muddies things, but I don't see any way this data could be pulled out from what we assume is being logged.

You're right that there are a lot of variables, but all things considered, even if you add in variances for all of those things, it's not going to change 15% into 100%. It's not going to change 3% into 100%. It just isn't. No matter what kind of variance you add in to compensate for player behaviour, it's just not likely that they could be statistically relevant to the tune of 85 or 97%. I'm going to guess that you have never studied any kind of statistics since you suggested 'polls' since polling is incredibly ineffective for trying to deal with this kind of personal experience data. We would get a very good idea of how people feel about it but proving that everyone 'feels' there are bandits everywhere is different from proving that everyone is a bandit, if that makes sense.

The only way to get this data is log trawling and analysis. I'm actually in the process of performing some psych research at the moment regarding video games and immersion and tomorrow when it's posted I'll give you an example on how to capture statistically valid data.

I also actually appreciate your attempts to pick holes in it; all things should be open for questioning and as normal I thoroughly encourage that they be questioned. If you think those things would pollute the front page statistics so badly that they are completely unusable then I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

Everyone is complaining about other people killing anyone they meet; if you want that to change, you need to change YOUR behaviour.

Approach from behind/cover and announce your presence. The best way to earn trust is to give it. You need to show people you've had an opportunity to kill them and you didn't. Don't trust anyone while you're raiding a high-value target, that's just competition for weapons. Don't point your gun at people. Don't hang around the coast like an idiot. Etc etc. There are lots of good simple rules we can follow to show people that we trust them. If most people aren't bandits then everyone else is killing in fear of bandits. This is hilarious because the number of players murdering each other is SO much higher than that of bandits. If those 3% of lives are polluting the servers that much then band together and hunt them. And if it's not then it's just paranoid people with shaky hands. Be the solution!

tldr , the reason that comes up the most when i shoot at players is"you startled me" its all in the approach.

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

Maths fail.

You're missing a key component to making this work. Time.

Without more in-depth statistics it's impossible to make an accurate argument for or against any claim being made.

[chhopsky 25]

Maths fail.

You're missing a key component to making this work. Time.

Without more in-depth statistics it's impossible to make an accurate argument for or against any claim being made.

Well, no, not maths fail. That would certainly make the above statistics more relevant but it doesn't necessarily make the above less relevant. You've actually hit the nail on the head with the word 'accurate' there, because there is a difference between accurate and statistically relevant. There are things in here that are impossible to quantify, but we can work around them.

BTW, I pulled the numbers on this stuff and did a similar back-of-napkin eval 2 weeks ago and everything seems to be scaling up in a linear fashion. So with at least two data points (we were at 12.8 million attempts, 1.8 million murders, at the time) we're pretty much dead on (lol).

Edited July 30, 2012 by chhopsky

[jdz (DayZ) 238]

Three firearms is just pointless and uses up too much inventory.

I have 3 yet still have heaps of room.

[Sinoby 39]

I've been playing this game since may, and I don't think I've met too many hostile players. Your experience depends on your play style. I've died 2 times to another player, once to a bush, twice to zombies and once to server-wide hack. The thing is - I avoid Cherno and Elektro as much, as I can. I've met several friendly players that were really nice, I've went to Cherno helping noombs and was quite sure I'll die. I didn't, but I healed several guys, helped some people with zombies.

Bottom line is - I don't see problems with KoS,if I play carefully enough.

[chhopsky 25]

Great to hear Sinoby. As I mentioned in another thread, the only stranger that ever ran in to save me when I was really in trouble was wearing a bandit skin.

[gizm0 96]

Cool now, than why do most if not all players that I see, shoot at me when they see me?

[Grey Warden 90]

Cool now, than why do most if not all players that I see, shoot at me when they see me?

Same, the only ones that don't are the unarmed ones.

Note: I stay away from Airstrips/Cities/Tents in the Wilderness/Crashed Helis so i am not in competing for high end loot or threatening people as i always stay in cover and always call out friendly if i am certain i have been seen. Always salute and lower weapon when seen by other players. Honestly i have no idea what more i can do. Maybe i'm just unlucky to find assholes all the time?

Edited August 1, 2012 by Grey Warden

[DrewDubious 19]

Unfortunatly, you overlooked some statistics that would alter your conclusions.

1) 100% of whiners use the forums.

2) Less than 50% of people who do not whine use the forums.

3) 100% of statistics are blanket statements and are never completely correct.

[Grey Warden 90]

Unfortunatly, you overlooked some statistics that would alter your conclusions.

1) 100% of whiners use the forums.

2) Less than 50% of people who do not whine use the forums.

3) 100% of statistics are blanket statements and are never completely correct.

And your evidence is?

[Sinoby 39]

I am bandit if I fee like it, but if I see someone in real trouble, I may jump in and help the guy. I will probably not tag along with him, but I will not shoot first if he asks for help. If I get killed - I don't care that much. I don't care about my gear at all. Helping feels really good in this game.

Some time ago me and my friend were looting some city up north, it was deep moonless night, we couldn't see a thing. When leaving the city we heard a guy on direct com asking if we are friendly. He was in complete darkness with dmr lying under a bush overlooking the city. He could have killed both of us no problem, but he didn't. Instead he risked revealing his position to two guys with assault rifles. We came to him, offered blood transfusion, but he said he is OK. Then we traided some ammo, and went away. I still remember that guy, thanks to him I still believe there are nice players in DayZ.

[Trapalicious 77]

Don't give a shit about a few numbers when experience itself has shown me that the only people who do not kill on sight are those that have just spawned.

Don't be part of the problem, be part of the solution. I'm going to save this post and possibly cross-post this info somewhere else because people whining about 'everyone kills u' are just .. wrong.

You cannot be serious.

Out of respect that no one can say something so naive and gullible, I'll just assume you are in fact joking.

Also, this might already be pointed out, but you have absolutely no idea how those statistics are recorded and which circumstances it counts a murder as a murder.

It also doesn't change the fact that countless will not be counted simply because they managed to run away.

Also, stop trying the stupid "whining" rubbish around. I've only made 8 posts on this forum so far and jesus christ, never have I seen this word used so much in such a small space of time. The fact is that a gigantic amount of people agree that random PVP'ing without reason IS an issue, and your stupid "ur wrong" attitude is not going to help this game in the slightest.

Edited August 1, 2012 by Flameo

[DrewDubious 19]

And your evidence is?

These or any other online game forums?

[evulclown@gmail.com 191]

Did you factor in the millions of "Respawn" deaths because people respawned on the beach over and over to get a better location?

Rocket has stated that people who click re spawn do not count in the statistics. I believe if you die after re spawning within a certain amount of time you do not count at all

[Jeetard 9]

Three firearms is just pointless and uses up too much inventory.

means you're a noob. lol.

sniper in the pack and assault rifle for primary m1911 or revolver as a secondary

[DieBrotmafia 79]

First of, you need to factor in all the noobs that start the game, run somewhere, shoot zeds, die at some points yet never run into a player. On a not-so-populated server and even on a populated one, if you don't go into chern or electro because you don't know the map (like probably 80% of players do) you will walk for an hour or longer till you reach your first player. Since average life expectancy is lower, most people won't ever have the chance to decide if they are bandits or not. Survivor doesn't mean he is friendly, it can also mean in his average short life span he didn't run into a player. People die often before they see another survivor or got a weapon to hurt him.

So in reality, if you factor in people that spawned with no weapon and people that died before meeting someone else with a weapon you can likely double that number or increase it to 60% or more. Pure speculation though. Average life expectancy is 40 minutes, I now played for several hours, only saw a person once. I started with looting cherno and looked into every big city by now except stary or the airfield.

Does a bandit kill count if you kill another bandit? Bandit skin has been removed, but humanity is still there (invisible to us) as far as I know. This could also change numbers significantly.

Now lets estimate that the numbers would be only 20%. DayZ would still be pretty much a deathmatch to all the people posting here and playing the game a lot. You want your character to not die. If you trust others and your chance of meeting a bandit is 20%, after only 3 encounters with other players your chance of "not" being shot by another player is roughly 50%. Your chance of survival in every encounter if you trust the other player is 80% (chance that the other player is friendly). 3 times is 0,8*0,8*0,8 ~ 0,5

So while a 20% chance doesn't sound like a lot, it absolutely prohibits any other policy then avoid or shoot on sight if you want to survive for a long time in this game. If you decide to go up to other players and you meet 5 players that day, you are most likely dead. The 20% of bandits would make coop pretty much impossible if you want to survive over a day. If you had in reality a 20% chance of getting killed by walking across the road, you would avoid it because you knew if you walk across it every day you won't reach the end of the week even if this single time it may work. You'd avoid it entirely.

Edited August 1, 2012 by DieBrotmafia

[Deuzerre 64]

Most of my deaths were direct or indirect player killings.

Notably: Getting shot at, but running away, using the only starting bandage... And getting hit by a Zed, until I bled out.

Otherwise i avoid people so...

[nucleqrwinter@gmail.com 156]

The only thing these numbers prove is that people die even more to bugs, glitches, zeds and hackers than they do to players. And you will often die before even meeting another player or getting a weapon.

Players will still kill you on sight, 90% of them . If you don't agree with this then you don't play the same game we all do.

So yeah, it kinda is an elaborate buggy deathmatch.

Add to this that these statistics are ridiculously inaccurate because of inactive players and of the huge influx of new players everyday and we're done there!

Edited August 1, 2012 by Nucleqrwinter

[DieBrotmafia 79]

Even if you throw all the numbers away and say 'theyre all shit because they can't be trusted' they still imply quite a lot even if we know they aren't accurate. The murder rate is not going to go up from 15% to 100% any time soon because we know people die from zombies, bugs, respawns, glitches etc. I wouldn't want to suggest a margin of error but even if it were massive, +/-15%, we would still only end up with a 30% rate.

You're right that there are a lot of variables, but all things considered, even if you add in variances for all of those things, it's not going to change 15% into 100%. It's not going to change 3% into 100%. It just isn't. No matter what kind of variance you add in to compensate for player behaviour, it's just not likely that they could be statistically relevant to the tune of 85 or 97%. I'm going to guess that you have never studied any kind of statistics since you suggested 'polls' since polling is incredibly ineffective for trying to deal with this kind of personal experience data. We would get a very good idea of how people feel about it but proving that everyone 'feels' there are bandits everywhere is different from proving that everyone is a bandit, if that makes sense.

An example:

I don't know what these 3% is. I'll just go with the alive characters.

I'll just make some assumptions. These assumptions are most likely true, just the exact numbers are total speculation. This will show you how much you can "trust" these statistics though. The only real statistic would be people who shoot at player encounter if they are in range, spotted the other person and have a weapon.

I'll start with 16% (current statistic).

People who die before they meet another player or haven't found another player yet: Probably 70% at a survival time of only 40 minutes and a map of 200 square kilometers and usually 30 players on the server.

So if you had 100% bandits, 70% couldn't prove they are and you would be at a statistic rate of banditry of only 30%. The other 70% would have killed but were not able to. So this makes our 16% go to 16* (100/30)=53,28%.

Now lets factor in people that are in a clan and don't kill because they are at their camp... Or people that don't kill on sight because they're scared they get shot themselves, but that would definitly kill you if you were to group up as soon as they get a clear shot... And so on.

Even with only a 3% "statistical" bandit rate, if you were to say that only 10% of people get a weapon and see a player in range before they die (mind only 40 minute survival rate and lots of noobs), you would be at 30% "real" bandit rate.

Now factor in the assumption that bandits are more experienced players (I became a bandit after several attempts) and play more compared to the average noob. Your chance of encountering a bandit becomes higher because he spends more time in the game. Can easily increase the rate from 30% to 50%. This leads us from 3% to 50%. But thats really speculation. I believe this might be true though, because current alive bandits / current alive players total is much higher then total bandits / total survival attempts, implying bandits stay alive much longer and are thus probably more experienced players that spend more time as well.

These statistics the way they are just don't tell you anything.

The real number of your chance encountering a bandit if you see a bandit can be anything from 3% to 70% if you were to control for some variables like i just showed with some examples. Only statistic useful would be player encounters, having seen someone with a weapon and the correct range, not from the same clan and not shooting even if you were to team up and get the possibility of a kill without risk involved. This would show you how well you can team up or how much its the opposite of a deathmatch.

Edited August 1, 2012 by DieBrotmafia

[rusty_shackleford 12]

You're wrong. Simple as that.

It is a deathmatch. The only people that I've seen working together are the ones without guns.

I spent 2 days in Electro getting some preety good gear.

-Czech Backpack

-2 Blood packs

-Food/Water

-M16A2 with 3 clips

-PDW 2 clips

-Morphene

After getting this gear I immediately starting heading north. I was running full speed through the foothills in the dense forest north of electro when I got sniped for no reason.

The spawn prior to this I got sniped before I even got a gun.

Spawn before that I was ran over by a truck.

I assure it IS a deathmatch. A simple solution to this problem would be to create 2 teams and have also create some new Elite Zomebies that drop good loot sometimes but are hard as hell to kill.

Edited August 1, 2012 by tykeith

[rusty_shackleford 12]

Your analysis of the stats is idealistic.

Maybe only 17% of people have killed another player.....but how many of the 83% never found a gun.....never seen another player....died from zombies and quit cause they think the game is too hard.

How many of the 83% actually had an oppertunity to kill someone and decided to be a nice guy. Not likely a great number of them in my opp. You can't look at these stats as absolutes.

[gizm0 96]

While the stats are for players overall, there is the issue the troves of new players flooding in and kinda deluding the stats and creating a diconnect to what the stats say and what most of our in-game experiences have shown us.

[chhopsky 25]

Don't give a shit about a few numbers when experience itself has shown me that the only people who do not kill on sight are those that have just spawned.

You cannot be serious.

Out of respect that no one can say something so naive and gullible, I'll just assume you are in fact joking.

Also, this might already be pointed out, but you have absolutely no idea how those statistics are recorded and which circumstances it counts a murder as a murder.

It also doesn't change the fact that countless will not be counted simply because they managed to run away.

Also, stop trying the stupid "whining" rubbish around. I've only made 8 posts on this forum so far and jesus christ, never have I seen this word used so much in such a small space of time. The fact is that a gigantic amount of people agree that random PVP'ing without reason IS an issue, and your stupid "ur wrong" attitude is not going to help this game in the slightest.

I can be, actually. The vast majority of people aren't bandits, and the stats prove that, so if everyone is still murdering then they are doing it because they are afraid. If you want people to shoot on sight less then you yourself need to not shoot on sight. I've spent the last few days distributing bandages and helping people being attacked by zombies in Elektro and you know what? Didn't get shot once.

Your personal experience is, in the face of 24 million survival attempts, completely irrelevant. It's all pretty well-defined.

If you attack someone and they die, it's a murder.

If you attack someone and they bleed out from their injuries, it's a murder.

If you attack someone and immobilise them and they're eaten by zombies, it's a murder.

There are undoubtedly people who will attack on sight, but I make an effort to make voice contact with people, announce my presence before entering buildings etc. I've been killed by some players recently - once in Berezhino military camp, once in a forest somewhere, never saw him. I'm not saying the player kills aren't happening, but the funny thing is that as time goes on and we all get better at the game and avoiding the zombies, the stats do become more and more stacked towards artificially amplifying the murder rate. If I stay alive for a month because I'm good at handling AI zombies, but eventually die in a firefight, I've still lost my life to a murder. Interesting.

The only thing these numbers prove is that people die even more to bugs, glitches, zeds and hackers than they do to players. And you will often die before even meeting another player or getting a weapon.

Players will still kill you on sight, 90% of them . If you don't agree with this then you don't play the same game we all do

Add to this that these statistics are ridiculously inaccurate because of inactive players and of the huge influx of new players everyday and we're done there!.

Really? Who dies before meeting another player or getting a weapon after their first week? How bad at this game ARE you?

Or, you're worse at the game and have not figured out how to introduce yourself to players without getting killed? There is a huge human interaction element to this.

Explain how they're inaccurate? New and inactive players still doesn't have an impact on the statistical relevance of most of the stats.

An example:

I don't know what these 3% is. I'll just go with the alive characters. I'll start with 16% (current statistic).

3% is the number of survival attempts that have become bandits. We get that by adding alive bandits to dead bandits and dividing that by the number of total survival attempts.

16% the ratio of lives that ended at the hand of another player. When taken in context that about 16% of currently alive players are bandits, and only 3% of total survival attempts have been used for banditry, what we can deduce from this is that a small number of bandits is killing a large number of players.

People who die before they meet another player or haven't found another player yet: Probably 70% at a survival time of only 40 minutes and a map of 200 square kilometers and usually 30 players on the server.

So if you had 100% bandits, 70% couldn't prove they are and you would be at a statistic rate of banditry of only 30%. The other 70% would have killed but were not able to. So this makes our 16% go to 16* (100/30)=53,28%

Where are you getting this from? That's totally made up. We can rely on the 40 minute average survival time but not anything else.

I admit you have lost me here. What do you mean "prove they are?" The banditry rate is 3%, that's provable. Or at least, it was a month ago when I posted this thread. It has gone down to 2.8% since then. The thing that really poisons these statistics is hacks. I've personally had two deaths contributing to the survival instances that have been hacks. That messes things up a bit.

Now lets factor in people that are in a clan and don't kill because they are at their camp... Or people that don't kill on sight because they're scared they get shot themselves, but that would definitly kill you if you were to group up as soon as they get a clear shot... And so on.

What's that got to do with anything? This is part of the game, do you engage or not engage because you're afraid you might get shot, etc. Some would say this is a core tenet of the game.

Even with only a 3% "statistical" bandit rate, if you were to say that only 10% of people get a weapon and see a player in range before they die (mind only 40 minute survival rate and lots of noobs), you would be at 30% "real" bandit rate.

Now factor in the assumption that bandits are more experienced players (I became a bandit after several attempts) and play more compared to the average noob. Your chance of encountering a bandit becomes higher because he spends more time in the game. Can easily increase the rate from 30% to 50%. This leads us from 3% to 50%. But thats really speculation. I believe this might be true though, because current alive bandits / current alive players total is much higher then total bandits / total survival attempts, implying bandits stay alive much longer and are thus probably more experienced players that spend more time as well. These statistics the way they are just don't tell you anything.

NOW you're getting into some real analysis. Heaps of this is speculation but we need more data to get any of it. I covered the bandits staying alive longer and playing longer side of things earlier.

They do tell you things, they just don't tell you _all_ of the things.

The real number of your chance encountering a bandit if you see a bandit can be anything from 3% to 70% if you were to control for some variables like i just showed with some examples. Only statistic useful would be player encounters, having seen someone with a weapon and the correct range, not from the same clan and not shooting even if you were to team up and get the possibility of a kill without risk involved. This would show you how well you can team up or how much its the opposite of a deathmatch.

What you're proposing is basically impossible to determine with gatherable data as so much of it is social. How do you determine when a player is around someone that they know IRL? All it seems you've done, is determine that you don't want to believe it so you'll try to find a way to argue with stats by setting an impossible bar for their accuracy.

You're wrong. Simple as that.

It is a deathmatch. The only people that I've seen working together are the ones without guns.

*stories here here*

I assure it IS a deathmatch. A simple solution to this problem would be to create 2 teams and have also create some new Elite Zomebies that drop good loot sometimes but are hard as hell to kill.

Your suggestion goes against the very core of this game. So much of it is social and about managing player expectations. Since basically everyone here is complaining about murder, and saying it is a deathmatch and they don't like that, the only way to stop it is for ALL OF YOU to start trusting other people a little more and start behaving a little less threateningly around other players.

Edited August 12, 2012 by chhopsky

[chhopsky 25]

I made this point in that last post, but it's important to think about so I'll give it a separate post.

When we are new at the game, we die from zombies. A lot. The chance that a new player will be killed by zeds as they don't know the mechanics and aren't careful enough is incredibly high. As time goes on and we get better at it, our chance of being killed in any of those encounters goes down. So thinking about things differently for a minute.

Let's say that a noob's skill level is proportional to time spent playing, both of which are inversely proportional to the chance they'll die in any one zombie encounter.

Say you have a 100% chance of death in your first zombie encounter. So the probability you'll survive one encounter is 0. As we get better, we might successfully sneak past one, two, three sets of zombies before making a fatal mistake. P(S1-N) gets less with the number of encounters increasing, and as skill level increasing, the probability of surviving ANY zombie encounter becomes 1 as you get better at handling them. I don't remember the last time I died from zombie encounters. So if we look at probability of death as relative to number of encounters then as players play longer the chance of dying at all from Zs is quite high vs chance of dying from player kills being quite low, due to probably not surviving long enough to have too many encounters.

It would be very interesting to chart the number of player encounters vs number of zombie encounters. I daresay people have a much higher death rate per encounter when dealing with players as skill level increases, simply because the comparison stat drops away underneath it. We encounter zombies every time we go anywhere near anything good, whereas players are encountered less frequently.

As time goes on my death rate due to players will approach 1 (assuming that hacks ever stop). So, to a certain extent these stats, if anything, may actually overstate the amount of PvP violence due to skill level increase. I own two copies of ArmA2 and thusly have two DZ characters. One of them has been alive for months, and only has one murder which was in defence of our group. The other has died a whole ass-tonne of times and has never murdered anyone.

I met a guy in Elektro with an axe getting mobbed by Zeds. I baited them off and drew them away, letting him attack them while they chased me. I found another guy trapped in a tower with Zeds coming up the stairs and managed to lure them away for him to escape. I met a guy at Rog and for a few very intense seconds thought I was about to get shot, but I didn't - I looked at him, made sure he knew I'd seen him, then looked away and scanned the forest on the other side, walking over to him with my back facing him, scanning for threats to us both. I was camped outside Stary and heard a voice "do you see me" and panicked. "no, i'm just watching the town". I stood up, lowered my weapon and turned around, never facing him directly. We watched the town together for a few minutes then he took off. I met a man at the coast who had a blood pack and an AKM. He gave me the AKM in return for giving him a transfusion. I camped the hills of Kamyshovo and picked off Zeds with an Enfield while an unarmed player fled the town, obvious unable to lose them. He climbed the hill and I finished the last of them while he fled into the forest. He stopped to catch his breath then moved on while I cleared the town around him. I've been saved from an insane horde by four people I've never seen before. I've been rescued by people in bandit skins.

I've been chased by someone with an axe when I was unarmed and bleeding out, wanting to trade not killing me for my loot. I've been shot by people I never saw. I've been teased by the promise of chopper crashes and shot while running for them. I've been killed looting Stary because I missed the shot after he went to loot the body of my friend he just killed. I've been shot in the head while screwing around in my backpack arranging things trying to get gear at military sites. I've been shot by people pretending to be friendly to get my friend's gear. I've had to drop my stuff and go while switching backpacks at a supermarket and been chased through Zelenogorsk for 20 minutes. I've escaped, stalked those people, and shot them & broke their legs then run away. I generally prefer to leave people with their lives, so long as they can't chase me.

This game is dynamic. It is what you make it. If you're all so unhappy with what others are making it then insist that gives you no option but to do the same, then you are the problem. Be the solution. Saving and co-operating with strangers has given me some of the most rewarding game experiences of my life, and I really hope you don't miss out on that by being jaded.

Edited August 12, 2012 by chhopsky