What is the point to DayZ, if not to kill players?

[deepfried 95]

In its current state, and hackers aside, PvP is really all there is going for DayZ. Sure you can coop survival, but how long does that last? survival is too easy for that to be a real objective. From fresh spawn I can get fully geared in 1/2 hour, there is no survival challenge apart from the first 10 minutes where I get the basics: food/water/pistol before heading inland.

[deathwizard77@gmail.com 28]

I actually asked my Fiancee who's getting her masters in Social Work and Psychology a similar question.

I asked her if "kill-on-sight" was a human result of scarce resources and self-preservation in an apocalyptic situation, or just people being jerks online.

Her Response (and I quote): "There's a little self-preservation to it, but most of it is just being a stranger online. A huge chunk of the population isn't going to instantly turn into murderers. I mean, come on... stop being assholes and start helping each other!"

So, there you have it folks... Straight from the professional. "Stop being assholes and start helping each other."

Professional or not this is simply a theory. Her theory may have some basis but fact is until this kind of situation came about no-one knows. Now on this do I think that Dayz counts as evidence for against this "of course not". People know they are playing a game so will act differently. She is also studied a hypothetical science. Meaning in 100 years we could find out everything our current day psychologist think about human thought is very far off. I doubt this, but it is possible. Once upon a time top scientists in the world thought the world was flat.

[zq7 67]

Rocket already does. He does so by what he adds and takes away from the game. If he adds blood packs that only help when administered by other players, he makes coop a better solution for surviving. If he adds cannibalism he makes KOS a better solution for surviving.

You simply react to his whims like a pawn, and you don't even know it.

Actually, he provides the environment and people get to choose how they respond to and use it.

e.g. if I want to go on a killing spree, or at least attempt one, with nothing more than empty tins that is my prerogative - so to speak.

[Siberian (DayZ) 527]

To those of you who whine about too much PK, I have one question: What point do you see to the game if not PvP in the long run?

Is it simply to survive the longest time possible? If so, that is extremely easy: Just get a few tools, go to some corner of the map where no one ever goes. Now wait patiently for your hunger and thirst meters to slowly dwindle and refill them by hunting and refilling water bottles. Wow, so much fun, right?

Is it collect incredibly rare weapons and equipment? Why? So you can waste the ammo on zombies? Watch as another simply respawns to take it's place. And honestly, if all you want to do is kill zombies, then camping in a barn with a Lee Enfield is all you have to do. You don't need fancy gear to kill zombies.

So, really. What is the point to this game if NOT to hunt players in the long run?

umm how bout you play ur sandbox the way you want and ill play the way i want..

PK players NEVER understand sandbox games EVER !!! typical.. so typical

[omgwtfbbq (DayZ) 1069]

Some people have this crazy idea that "helping others" is somehow its own reward. NEWS FLASH: Helping someone, more often than not, will get you killed. Give a guy a gun, and what's he going to do? Shoot you in the head for being stupid enough to give him a gun.

Not sure why so many people complain about the player killing. Honestly it's one of the better aspects of the game.

hey dumbass, you do realize that you're not supposed to hand them your AS50 and say please don't shoot me, i'm helping you! No. you help them live longer. if they get a gun, shoot their legs and run away while laughing maniacally. it works if you aren't fucking retarded about it.

[thievery 7]

It's all about ego. People will do what the game rewards them for. The game tracks zombie kills, murders, and bandits killed so they'll go for that for the sake of a number. If DayZ added a players saved stat and a Medic HQ here on the forums then people would start doing that too. If they added a roadkill stat I bet a lot more people would start getting run over. Too bad they don't add some sort of civilization function where the game challenges you to build some sort of survivors camp and rewards you accordingly. I'd love to try my hand at building one and at taking one down. Still going to try to build some kind of large camp on a server for the heck of it anyways.

[`Orum 17]

I love it when people say stuff like this. Is that how you feel in real life?

Your question is moot. The "game" doesn't mimic real life. In a real apocalyptic scenario, we would have the option to rebuild society. In this game, we do not have that option. We have basic survival, which is trivial, so we're left with player killing for entertainment. That's really all there is to it.

[haviv[3rdid] 57]

I KNOW

Aside from kill players, you can also try to avoid getting killed by players.

Weird that this survival game is all about survival.

WHERE ARE THE EPIC QUESTS AND HOW DO I FRIEND SOMEONE IN GAME. I WANT RAID DUNGEONS

I want to spend hours killing 2xp boars!

Edited August 1, 2012 by Benjamin

[Rokor Fenix 143]

I find it fun because a group of my friends IRL can group up and just loot, and have fun.

Then setup a camp and tell stories around a fire of all who have died in the war between humans and zombies.

.

.

.

And then we get murdered.

[cianstaic@yahoo.co.uk 9]

a little bit from column A and a little bit from column Derp

Edited August 1, 2012 by CianDS

[Trapalicious 77]

The problem isn't the fact that PVP exists; it adds an edge to the game and keeps you on your toes.

What IS the problem, is that there's so fucking much PVP, and I'll explain. It's a zombie survival game and the zombies don't do a single thing. I only started playing this game recently and every single death has been by other players. Even when I was brand new and had absolutely no idea where I was going, running from zombies is easy with absolutely no gear, and with gear you don't even need to think about them.

The only fear in this game right now is being sniped by some douchebag from more than half a mile away because he's bored, and you will NEVER find him.

Zombies need to be a much bigger threat, that will dramatically increase the player's amount of shit giving to zombies, thus the killing of random players who obviously pose no threat will be less of an issue.

Edited August 1, 2012 by Flameo

[Lord Fartus 61]

The zombies do post a great thread but not what you'd initially think. See, you have to deal with their horrendous pathing, their inexplicable bursts in speed and teleporting and to really top it off, the absolutely abysmal failure that is called hit detection. Whether that's a server issue or an engine issue, who knows but it is MISERABLE.

[Powell (DayZ) 734]

My "endgame" is acquiring a chopper and flying out of the map with it, then crash it very far away, killing myself/my group. I then imagine that I "got away" and went to a safe place. You know, like L4D...

[hawc 63]

I love when people say stuff like this.

THIS ISN'T REAL LIFE. THERE IS NO REAL ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE.

You also have NO IDEA how you would react in a situation like this. None of you have seen your friends ripped apart and eaten alive by zombies. Fucked up situations do fucked up things to peoples minds.

And unless you know someone who has been through a real zombie apocalypse, you do not have a "professional" to consult on the matter.

So fucking true.

[Donkey (DayZ) 3]

Playing this game just to kill other players is just like playing COD deathmatch, except you only see 1 player all day, and most of the time he will either not see you (and you walk up and BOOM HEADSHOT!) or look right at you and say "hey buddy, you want to be friends?" with no intention of fighting back (BOOM HEADSHOT! Yeah baby! I'm winning!!). Sure this is an option as a playstyle, but I can't see how it's the most exciting one. I certainly wouldn't have played COD for long with this premise.

As for what you would do in a real zombie apocalypse vs in the game. In reality I can't imagine I'd go roaming through the woods with an assault rifle looking for a bigger gun and shooting people. I'd probably take up gardening or something. Obviously our motivations are different in game.

[badger05 41]

In the future hopefully they add more end game sand box stuff. Getting helicopters that sort of thing but instead with making bases like forts.

[jdz (DayZ) 238]

There is no point, do whatever the fuck you want. Have races in the bus if you bloody want

[Rock (DayZ) 95]

Point of DayZ isn't about killing other survivors. It's about surviving, which may, from time to time, involve that. Gearing up with a machine gun, walking into Cherno, and shooting anything that's face ISN'T stained with blood and rotting away while yelling one-liners at the top of your lungs, only to finish by turning the gun on yourself, crippling both of your own legs, and crawling to the hospital to loot the morphine off of the player with the dying mother up north desperately in need of medicine for he fatal contraction of syphilis while trying to gut a cow isn't EXACTLY the way this was intended to be played.

While you CAN play it like that, and let Johnny Goodguy's mother die a slow, painful animal-syphilis related death while sheltering herself in an outhouse that hadn't been cleaned since the Warsaw Pact was signed, IS a legitmate way to play, it detracts from the actual feeling of this being DayZ and instead gives it a more CoD or Battlefield feel

[core.- 28]

Those that argue the game is about something are wrong. Both parties. "ITS ABOUT SURVIVING!" wrong. "ITS ABOUT PVP!" wrong. Its a game, its meant to frustrate, annoy and entertain.

But please continue with this pointless discussion all the while knowing both sides are completely wrong. Do whatever the hell it is you feel like doing at the time. Guy crawls into my barn yesterday talking on voice. He claims he needs morphine. I tell him he has 15 seconds to drop his guns or he loses his life. He tries to sit there and convince me the game is about trust and surviving and that hes not gonna drop his gun. The fuck you think I did? There have been other times where people do comply and they get everything they ask for. Its all about how I feel I want to play this game within the constructs of the sandbox.

Cheating, exploiting etc is no longer within the boundaries of the sandbox and is therefore wrong. This we can all agree on.

But what I imagine when I hear both sides here speak is the following:

2 Kids sitting at opposite ends of the sandbox. 1 creates a castle style sandcastle and the other tries to recreate the deathstar from Star Wars. Now that their castles are sorta finished.. all they have left to do is yell at each other the following line. "YOU ARE BUILDING SANDCASTLES WRONG! YOU ARE SOOOOOOOOOOOO STUPID!"

Not for nothing kids... but its a sandbox.the only way you can play the game "wrong" is by cheating, exploiting or not playing at all.

[sostronk 334]

If PvP is the only thing worth doing in this game, why aren't people just playing ARMA 2 instead of DayZ.

[tarquinbb 28]

i wish people would stop saying zombies 'dont do a single thing' and the like...

seriously...

yesterday i got killed in berezino by a single zombie. i had 9000 blood and got knocked out for AGES (at least 2-3 minutes). i woke up with 2000 health and bleeding, but it was in total darkness and my character wouldn't stand up properly - i couldn't work out what was going on because of the dark - but i could not move and the zombie finishes me off before i work it out..

then it took me about 2 hours to reclaim my corpse... because i had gps, cz550 and all of the 'essential' stuff.

If PvP is the only thing worth doing in this game, why aren't people just playing ARMA 2 instead of DayZ.

dayz is basically an rpg, and one life only... therefore characters hold more value, which means pvp is about far more than showing off your aiming/dodging/game sense skillz. often, the lucky guy or the camper guy wins. pvp in dayz is waaaaay more 'thrilling' than normal FPS games, and the game is more thrilling just at the prospect of encountering another player. it's tension shooter vs 'twitchy skill' shooter.

Edited August 1, 2012 by tarquinbb

[sofaplayer@hotmail.com 22]

The problem with PVPing is that you are forced to do it even if you don't want to... After being killed several times when attempting to meet or helping people i decided to get on the bus, but that doesn't mean i miss the interaction with strangers within the game.

For me it'd be great if the bandits/PVPers had a big PVP sign marked in red on their clothes, that way i'd avoid/kill them on sight, but it'd be cool as well if pple who want to play co-op with random players could do so.

ATM CODers have killed that aspect of the game and it's only possible to create groups outside of dayZ effectively.

[DaveAzoicer (DayZ) 135]

To survive the zombie apocalypse.

But yes, bandits must exist, thou PKers isn't the answer to "end-game".

[EverReady 0]

While this game does need player killing, players don't need to kill to have fun. I'm not going to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't do. I personally find that this game is about the experiences, especially with other players. Whether those experiences involve working together, killing everyone you see, lending a helping hand, or having a mexican standoff with a group of people. You need to find what you enjoy and pursue it as best you can. Personally, I find not shooting people to be the most rewarding experience by far, because so many different things can happen.

I think the bravest people who play this game are the real bandits who attempt to rob or kidnap other players. They're prepared to fail and get gunned down, but the emergent gameplay experiences just have so much potential with that playstyle that the few times they succeed are pretty awesome for both themselves and their victims.

I was kidnapped once, earlier in the game before killing on sight became so common. It's probably one of my favorite moments in gaming thus far. There I am, with a crossbow killing zombies to get some loot out of a barn, when this van just rolls up behind me. I didn't quite know what to do, and then four guys jumped out with a mixture of enfields and military weapons. They shout at me over direct coms to lower my weapon and lay down on the ground, and I do so because this has been one of my best lives so far. They walk up around me, the man with the M1014 constantly pointing that terrifying shotgun at my head as the others sift through my pack. Once they've taken anything they found useful, they tell me to get in the van. I expected to just be shot, so I counted myself lucky here and climbed in the back seat. The others piled in with me and they drove up to the Vybor airfield, where they made me get out and walk on point ahead of them into the zombie infested area. They made me quietly kill the zombies with my crossbow while the man with the enfield kept his barrel ever pointed at my chest. Once the path to the barracks was cleared, two of them went in and looted it while the others stood watch, one of whom kept an eye on me as I was ordered to lay face-down in the dirt until they were ready to make me clear to the other buildings. This was my first time on the airfield and I was terrified, but I did as they said and I lived. I was forced to help them loot the entire area before they were finally done with me. They took me back to the van, and after driving for a few minutes (I had no map at the time and no ARMA II experience so I was completely lost) they told me to get out of the van, where they gave me one soda and one can of food and drove off.

In my opinion, creating experiences like that should be everyone's goal. Whether you do it through banditry, cooperation, or as a rescue medic, you should do your best to create some of the most fun and interesting situations in gaming. While you can't do much real banditry any more until the disconnection issues are fixed, I'd love to see the return of real highwaymen and criminals, and less of the serial killers we see today.

Just my two cents, I haven't read most of the thread or anything.

What an awesome story ... I had a similar experience whilst playing an RPG online many years ago. Like you, that experience was one of the greatest and most enjoyable memories I have of that game. It's nice to read that there are people interested in bringing an element of RP'ing to this game. Thanks for sharing, it brought back fun memories.

[kebman 213]

No he doesn't. He doesn't dictate whether I feel like murdering that hapless bush wookie or if I want to help mr pink get some beans. I play MY game how I want. Nothing more to it.

Yeah, he does. It's simple psychology. By making X an obvious choice, and Y a harder choice, people tend to do X more often than Y. By adding and subtracting features, he makes stuff easier or more difficult to do. You, being a pawn, will always choose the easiest one. Bottom line, you only have the feeling of real choice, and I can understand full well how that makes you want to live in denial.

Edited August 5, 2012 by kebman