The PvP Discussion Thread

[Malaclypse 3]

Came to play a mod where I team up, help others, maybe deal with a legitimate bandit (killing to gain gear, provisions), but instead I wind up getting spawnkilled for what, some starter pistol rounds, maybe some beans/water if the killer even bothers to loot the corpse. That strikes me as pretty bogus, and on my end is really frustrating. People with less patience than myself will probably leave the mod, even though it has so much promise and potential to break into something really great.

Though on the subject of "legitimate" banditry, everything in Chernarus is currently stocked to the brim. There's enough for everyone to have, there's no need for have-nots, and what we can accomplish together is, as in the real world, greater than what we can accomplish alone. There is no real reason not to work together, and those who aren't at least interested in it if not practicing it actively are sociopaths that can respawn.

Personally, I'll never shoot anyone on purpose (I winged a buddy of mine on accident due to latency issues, sorry man). I don't have it in me, even if they're shooting at me. Not in this mod, anyway, because I feel that is contrary to the intent of it. But I'm not exactly looking for buddies anymore, either, because they'll probably just cap me in the back for some ammo instead of just asking me. And I think that sucks. I want to trust people, I want to actually work with them, really, man.

I will say it's very refreshing to see people out, offering help to others (the Red Cross brigade members that I've seen on Dallas 1 are p-rad) instead of dropping everything in sight with no hint of simulated morality.

[Nutrify 0]

A major disaster has occurred. You've been surviving for a few days on your own. You've seen groups of people but have avoided them.

Then one day' date=' while looting a grocery store, a woman calls out. She comes in carrying her 7 year old daughter. She says that her daughter's ankle is badly broken and needs help. Her daughter is softly crying and you can tell she's suffering from a fever. You can see that the woman has a large kitchen knife tucked into a makeshift holster clearly visible on her hip.

What do you do?

- Provide medical aid, offer to help the woman and team up.

- Provide medical aid, leave.

- Give them a token amount of assistance, and leave.

- Ignore them and leave. Probably threaten to kill them both if they follow you.

- Take everything they have at gunpoint, leave them.

- Take everything they have at gunpoint, THEN kill them.

- Kill them right away and see if they had anything useful.

- Kill the daughter in her woman's arms, and then shoot both her kneecaps. Make her watch as you rape her daughter's corpse. Put a blowtorch to the woman's face to teach her to dump her problems on you. Make her eat her flesh, then use the woman as a sex slave until she dies of infection and shock.

People bitch about RPGs that present moral choices where you only have two choices, with the 'evil' option being the equivalent of turning you into the Hitler Youth, but look at how you morons act in-game. I'll be the 'sperging basement dweller virgins just love to think they're hardasses and would pick something from the last half of the list. People in-game pick things from the last half of the list.

But in reality? No, you wouldn't. You know you wouldn't. You're just such an antisocial prick who has so few friends you have absolutely no understanding of human empathy. And most of you fat nerds would die trying to remember how to light a fire anyway so I hardly think your 'opinions' of how people would act in a survival situation matter, since you rejects of humanity would cull yourselves in the first week.

[/quote']

Ah yes I remember being in that situation... Oh wait. Something like that has never happened. I would go with 0% of people playing this game have actually been in a situation similar to this game. Survival of the fittest. If you can't defend yourself you were dead at the start. Nice try on useing sex and the fact that she is a little girl to help your arguement.

I will entertain you though. 1: Badly broken ankle. Likely not fixable unless you have the right medical equipment. I'll give you a hint. You won't find this stuff in a grocery store. The fact that they went to a grocery store and just simply approached the first person seems like there are different intentions.

2: Fever. Likely infection has already set in and with out proper medical attention she will at the very least lose the leg but more likely her life.

3: A knife in a makeshift holster. Not something the average person knows how to make or would think of a reason to make. Clearly someone who knows what they are doing when it comes to a knife.

The daughter is as good as dead. Nothing you do will help her. Anything you do for her is a waste. The best thing you could do for her is give her a quick death. That is the sympathetic approach to that situation. "Helping her" will cause a nice slow painful death. How good of you. Never mind the mother has a knife and likely knows how to use it in self defense.

They came to you for help so they likely have nothing to offer. Best bet would be to get out.

ANYWAY. I've killed one person(almost killed another because he was cheating) and it was for his matches. I had been playing for a good part of the day and couldn't find any matches. So I found someone with them. This game is a what you make it kind of game. Each person has their own goals set in their head. And every person will go about them differently. If you are too afraid of interacting with other people, maybe a multiplayer game isn't for you.

[Jrod (DayZ) 3]

So in summary, lawlessness.

[Saboteur (DayZ) 2]

LOL. The point is to survive?

The ones trying to survive are the 'survivors' who are battling zombies' date=' forming groups and scouting for equipment. The players PvPing don't care about survival. To them it's death-match with 30 second respawns.

Want realism? Take away global and side chat completely. It's just players typing "Anyone in Kamenka" which gives bandits a magic beacon to find victims. Take away all the overpowered weapons that litter the coastal regions. We don't need Lee Enfields, CZ50's, AK's and DMR's to kill zombies in Cherno and Elektro. Make it foggy at night with limited view distance so bandits can't track other players with flares from miles away.

Is that too unrealistic, or will it just make it too hard for the PvPers who keep campaigning that the game should be brutal and uncompromising, yet cry if it takes skill to hunt other players?

I would like to see melee weapons like baseball bats in the game too, maybe as the default starting weapon, and have military weapons removed from coastal areas. Would make it harder to just keep spawning and continuing on a killing spree.

[/quote']

This x 100000

Oh and this just about captures the entire Bandit/Pvper player base

[Thesreyn 18]

TurkeyBurger's argument is based purely around hyperbole.

Supplies are not as frequent as he makes out, unless you're the only person in a major city which is very rarely the case. Your carrying space is limited so you have to prioritise, but what takes priority is fluid. Sometimes food is a higher priority, sometimes water, but you always need both as well as medical supplies, weapons and ammunition.

You could make an argument for the idea of only searching for food and water when your needs monitor is getting red, but if that's the case and you die because you didn't find food or water, or you HAD to take a risk around too many zombies or other players to survive, well then all that pack space you saved wasn't worth it.

I killed the same person twice yesterday. The first time he was snooping around the car my friends and I were fixing up. We didn't have space for him in the car and I was running low on food, plus I could use a bit more ammo and he had the same rifle as me. The second time he came back (very quickly too, must have spawned nearby, which is weird because this was inland) I shot him again. Not because I needed supplies (though they helped) but because a) he was still snooping around and b) this player was going to remember that I shot him for my previous reasons last time and will probably try to kill me.

Later on, we had the car almost fixed and another guy came snooping around. I alerted my other friend who was on watch with me at this point and we kept our eyes out. When he looked to be lining up a shot against my friend, I flung a few of my own shots his way, then told him to back off. He ran, bandaged and then continued running, before deciding the town wasn't worth his trouble. I could have killed him, but I didn't. I could have followed him with the intent of killing him, but I only followed him after a time to make sure he wasn't trying to come in and take us out from another angle.

This mod is a survival mod with Zombie elements, as so many people have said. That is not synonymous with "Survive against zombies" and some people need to realise this. It's about survival against players, the environment, zombies... whatever threat presents itself. If you want to play a game that is PvZ, go and play Left 4 Dead.

As to item spawns, there are very few people (and only one using such hyperbole) who claim that things spawn too readily. There have been a number of complaints from players who are sick of only finding empty cans all over the place.

Should some thing be modified? I'd say so. Winchester ammo could be made a bit more scarce. The Mountain Dew drop rate could be increased. But this mod is in fucking Alpha, it will take time to get things right.

The most important thing to remember about this entire debate is that a Forum, regardless of whether it is "the forum" for your entity of choice, is not representative of your player base. It is representative only of the people on the forum, and as with any issue anywhere ever, the vocal minority is going to be louder than the happy majority. The exception being the ending to Mass Effect 3. The point, and this is for the Mod Devs, is that they should take any "majority opinion" on the forums with a grain of salt. No decision is going to make everyone happy, and if the people who are unhappy deem it necessary they will be vocal in any relevant medium they can use. And yes, they will use hyperbole, strawman arguments and ad hominem attacks to try and make their points.

My opinion is by no means representative of anyone but myself (and to a lesser extent my friends who I play with), but this mod has been flawless as a concept. Yes, bugs exist, but they're getting fixed. But as a game about survival with zombie elements thrown in, this mod is sublime. The fact that some players can't handle getting beaten by others and then come and complain about it on the forums should not change how great this mod is.

[bodycount 83]

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Buddy I performed an experiment and repeated it three times just to remove the possibility of error or bias. I spawned on the beach and within no less than 20 minutes I had upgraded bags with as much food water main weapon and ammo as I could carry THREE TIMES I did it on three separate servers. I wanted to see if it was me or if it was the mod.

I have an interest in enhancing gameplay. Maybe I AM the only one speaking about a removal of the item respawn system. But the experiments that were performed provide data that speaks for itself. If you do not believe me try it out for yourself. Let the empirical evidence speak for itself. It is no longer an opinion, it enters the realm of observation tested with experimentation and confirmed with data.

That is fact friendo.

[Jeff (DayZ) 1]

That doesn't really provide good data, 3 go arounds isn't exactly the most solid amount to work with.

Even so, lowering the respawn rate is a much better idea than taking it out entirely. Any idea that has the phrase "Requires a server restart to..." is generally a bad idea.

Lowering the rate, sure. Making them rarer, sure. Taking it out? No.

[Thesreyn 18]

Any statistician would cringe at your mentioning of a sample size of 3.

No, you're not the only one talking about lowering item rates and yes, some items need to be tweaked, but it is nowhere near as bad as you make it sound.

The threat in the cities comes from other players and the zombies brought about by conflict with other players (or the occasional pack you have to take down because of some other reason).

If you drop the item respawns, then players who restart are going to have more incentive to kill each other at spawn. That doesn't solve the rampant PKing problem. If you leave item spawns the same at spawn areas, but change them elsewhere in the map, you're encouraging players to stay in the spawn areas.

I appreciate what you're trying to do, getting people to spread out, but the way you're going about it is wrong, and your arguments are sensationalised and overly-dramatic. No amount of quoting Inigo Montoya is going to change that.

As it is, there are a few tweaks that need to be made to the item system, perhaps an hour long respawn instead of 30 minutes and yes, some things need to be toned down (WAY too much Winchester ammo for example, and too many good weapons near spawn).

A change which would be effective is if the spawn areas had higher chances to have empty tin cans/junk than the more inland areas and there is only a small chance of improved packs/weapons (and no chance of the really good ones) from spawning in coastal areas. This means that players can still hang around spawn, gathering supplies, but when they want to move up in the world, they have to move in-land. It's not going to fix the spawn-killing problem, but this is an area where many people will have to agree to disagree. I think the incredible threat of other players in the spawn areas is a great thing. Others disagree.

[bodycount 83]

I killed the same person twice yesterday. The first time he was snooping around the car my friends and I were fixing up. We didn't have space for him in the car and I was running low on food' date=' plus I could use a bit more ammo and he had the same rifle as me. The second time he came back (very quickly too, must have spawned nearby, which is weird because this was inland) I shot him again. Not because I needed supplies (though they helped) but because a) he was still snooping around and b) this player was going to remember that I shot him for my previous reasons last time and will probably try to kill me.

Later on, we had the car almost fixed and another guy came snooping around. I alerted my other friend who was on watch with me at this point and we kept our eyes out. When he looked to be lining up a shot against my friend, I flung a few of my own shots his way, then told him to back off. He ran, bandaged and then continued running, before deciding the town wasn't worth his trouble. I could have killed him, but I didn't. I could have followed him with the intent of killing him, but I only followed him after a time to make sure he wasn't trying to come in and take us out from another angle.

[/quote']

THIS! Jesus fucking christ THIS! Right here THIS! READ THIS EVERYONE! This man GETS IT whether he knows it or not HE just experienced dynamic zombie apocalyptic gameplay!

WHAT makes cars so valuable that you are willing to fight and kill to protect them?

SCARCITY!

RARITY!

The fact that cars are not spawning next to tons of buildings every 30 minutes. They are VALUABLE because they are RARE!

THAT is what drove you to have an amazing multiplayer PvP experience!

Don't you GET THAT? Don't you SEE IT?

[junkyarddog 4]

A whole bunch of text.

Lets assume that everything you say is true. Lets assume that indeed, food, water, ammo, and weapons literally grow on trees, and said fruits drop into our hands effortlessly.

So what's there left to do?

Survive? What do you mean, survive? Shoot at retarded AI zombies for days on end? Is that all you want the mod to be, overstocked, overstuffed carebear players with not a trouble in the world, aimlessly and mindlessly moving from town to town, shooting zombies who possess the exact same mental capacity as said shooters?

And if it's oh, so easy to gather up supplies in literally minutes, why are people complaining there is literally nothing but towns of empty cans and empty whiskey bottles? Why are people like you enraged at the prospect of another player killing you, when it's so effortless to simply respawn and gather some more loot that's pouring out of every concrete orifice?

Could it perhaps be that you're just a confused contradiction? Could it be that in reality, people are bloody LOVING the mod in it's current, relatively broken, severely bugged, and at times very flawed state? Let me tell you this, though. There is always a customer compaints department, a customer's appreciation department doesn't exist. Similarly, plenty of people will sign up and whine for days on end, for whatever reasons. But the ones who are happy, the ones who are enjoying themselves on the bloody packed servers right this minute, are not on this forum expressing their infinite joy, because they'd rather continue enjoying themselves with the mod.

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong somewhere. You tell me. You seem to have all the facts, friendo.

[mwnash@gmail.com 0]

What if a sort of anti-bandit state was implemented? A way for the players to police themselves?

[bodycount 83]

Fuck it lets test it out RIGHT now. Lets all join the same exact same server and respawn at the same time and time ourselves and see how many supplies we can collect. You think I am exaggerating? You think I am making it up? You think I do not enjoy PvP and want the game to be fucking HARDER and MORE DIFFICULT and in line with a survival zombie sim because It will make it EASIER ON ME?

Take the mother fucking Pepsi challenge. PROVE me a liar. I dare you. I double mother fucking BEAN dare you.

It is almost like I am playing a different mod than yall and I am posting on the wrong forums. Yall seriously have no problem with the amount of supplies to be found and the respawn rate of those supplies making sure they an area is almost never used up?

[rocket 16567]

As I said in the other thead(s). Originally, each building only spawned items once.

Patch 1.5.1 accidentally implemented what you are asking for, and filled the world with empty tin and soda cans.

I have never received so much email in my life, than I did after patch 1.5.1.

Idea's are a dime a dozen. While I like hearing people's idea's - anyone who works in the game industry knows idea's are useless. What matters, what get's people jobs, and what makes games - is defined game mechanics. If you are just suggesting balancing, be specific. But I don't see any defined game mechanics or specific balancing suggestions in here.

Thesreyn raised the key issue here, game design is like building a card-house. Everything ends up depending on each other. Also, in a game world that has between 600-900 people playing at once, exploits are identified faster than I (even a whole team) can fix them.

Balancing is a careful act of changing, but to change a mechanic entirely to a new "idea" is not something you just "do". It requires logic, with all the cases of that logic explored, otherwise it cannot be written as code. The current system has folllowed through from a game mechanic I defined and wrote out as logic. Loot is spawned based on building type and class, respawn is calculated based on time with a period where the building is empty.

[Jeff (DayZ) 1]

Nobody said that you overreacting twat. A lot of folk -do- want items spread out and spawn rates tweaked, but you're the ONLY person who wants items to be so damn rare it takes a server restart.

EDIT: Er, that wasn't posted for you, rocket.

[AllDayZSimon 75]

If given a chance to play on a PVP or a non-pvp server with unlimited slots. ALL of you will choose non-pvp no doubt. You all talk like you're hardcore' date=' but really you just joined the game like me when it was viral.

I would be ok with PVP if the bullets didn't do so much damage. You can risk a zombie hoard, looting another player, or both. But simply shooting everyone you see which is what a lot of people are doing is retarded. Hell give us weak NPC that you can shoot at to loot shit instead of pking others, or let it follow you for a certain time depending on your humanity. Low humanity will cause NPC to shoot at you.

I was motivated to play because of videos like CHKillroy where teamwork made it fun. Not some 1 man army sniping montage.

[/quote']

Groups aren't that hard to find. Look harder, you'll find one, I promise.

Because that isn't going to get you killed/robbed about 80% of the time from the sound of it?

[AllDayZSimon 75]

^ So that should negate the obvious flames? Just because it wasn't directed at the community owner?

[Jeff (DayZ) 1]

Erm, no? I was just clarifying who it was pointed at. I still stand by what I said.

[rocket 16567]

Guy's cmon :)

I end up posting the same comments in multiple topics because nobody can see my posts because they get swamped with all the insults and the bickering!

[Benzin (DayZ) 7]

I don't know I kinda like it the way it is, only thing I'd say is add in different zombie types and make them spawn in the woods.

-mega shrug-

[AllDayZSimon 75]

From what I see, there's no reason NOT to become a bandit.

A: Murdering people will shoot you up through HOURS of searching, just to "lolpewpew" some guy who spent the time actually FINDING it.

B: You get a spiffy new model and look different! Kill players, Look unique!

C: You probably have at-least two other players in a vent/TS server, so even when you die they'll just kill your attacker and let you recover your gear and continue your massacre like nothing happened.

"Oh if you murder, people will come after you!"

Is seems like if you DON'T murder, people come after you A LOT quicker..Maybe even two hundred yards away in a direction you weren't even looking.

Shit, something as simple as getting over two player-kills making it impossible to loot -your own- corpse would have a stronger implication than what I see is currently inplace.

[DinkyDogg 1]

So lets take all the suggestions and boil down to what would happen:

1st) Respawns are taken out, the game breaks down into a massive deathmatch for supplies (most realistic?)

2nd) The respawns are set to high and everyone can get supplies. The game becomes bland and people start killing each other because going from town to town when you have all the best gear is blah

3rd) PVP is completely removed. If the zombies remain unchanged, people will soon have all the best gear and end up either going on a zombie spree, making loot easier to get for others, or the mod dies out because no real threat or challenge

These are just in my mind, and im sure rocket's way of respawn is set for a good balance for new players getting in, as well has adding competition for high valued weapons and gear.

Though respawns set lower would be favoured, though i can see more people taking the bandit path to get more gear.

As AlldayzSimon says, theres no real draw back to being a bandit, apart from getting shot on site, but thats up to the player to be cautious and move slowly.

This mod is what you make of it (stolen from someone cant remember :P) if you just go running around without a care in the world, expect to be a target

[tpenn 9]

The whole "Rage" system is pretty gamey. I don't see why two different playstyles need to be interpreted by zombies differently. You're meat' date=' the guy shooting at you is meat, only you're standing in front of me shooting in front of my face at the guy shooting you two blocks down.

[/quote']

You mean you lack any knowledge of simple biological chemical functions such as sweat, body ordor and pheromones? And that the scent of all three can be affected by emotions and general lifestyle?

Does it completely escape you then, that an animalistic ex-human with a heightened sense of smell could just maybe detect the same things other animals do when they smell your sweat and fear before they even see you? Or even that us scent-handicapped humans can detect these same things to a lesser (often unconscious) degree?

Knowing that emotions like habitual rage, and other antisocial lifestyles affects our body ordor isn't some "magic balance factor", it's real life. So whether you want to approach this from a realism standpoint or game-balancing standpoint, it blends either way.

Of course, the only game element here is making that humongous leap of faith where we have to assume just maybe animalistic scent-enhanced Zombies might find something unique that stands out above the usual smell of fear- that a lifestyle of constant rage and antisocial behaviour towards others might increase levels of sweat and affect the ordor.

But yeah, such a leap must be completely unfathomable given everything we know about Zombies... how they have that remarkable sense of smell and hearing, minor details at best! Yes, it must be quite a stretch...

or perhaps it's more likely you're already too-far entrenched in having a deathmatch arena that you feign objection to a legitimate suggestion that appeals to both realism and gameplay?

[AllDayZSimon 75]

As AlldayzSimon says' date=' theres no real draw back to being a bandit, apart from getting shot on site, but thats up to the player to be cautious and move slowly.

[/quote']

I hate to say it, but I doubt having a bandit model gives you any different % chance of getting shot on sight than anyone else. Shit some people are given the bandit costume because they killed some regular. Some regular is turned into a bandit for defending himself.

You're going to get killed by players either way it seems, having a different outfit doesn't really factor when 60-90% of the server is hell bent on slaughtering people for small shit like spawn beans.

[DinkyDogg 1]

I hate to say it' date=' but I doubt having a bandit model gives you any different % chance of getting shot on sight than anyone else. Shit some people are given the bandit costume because they killed some regular. Some regular is turned into a bandit for defending himself.

[/quote']

A new player seeing someones name in red will shoot on site.

But i did that exact thing just before, guy had a bandit outfit, i shot first asked after, found out he just got it in self defense. Normally if i see someone i ask, but i know bandits are generally bad.

The way you get the skin needs tweaking, but it is an alpha, but it does what it intends, to scare people into killing a guy that could be a threat.

Most of the people on server i play have always been friendly and asked my intentions, and even if i see a guy and he doesnt reply, i avoid him.... IT's how i play and its worked... up until a bandit with a sniper gets you

[AllDayZSimon 75]

"

You're going to get killed by players either way it seems, having a different outfit doesn't really factor when 60-90% of the server is hell bent on slaughtering people for small shit like spawn beans. "

Forgot to quote that little tid-bit, the most important part of my post I do believe.