Treehugger's survivor, bandit, soldier idea

[decoman 45]

In order to promote a fair fight condition for players with differing motivations, I suggest the following game mechanics:

Three roles (game mechanics)

1) Survivor

2) Bandit

3) Soldier

• Basicly, everyone starts out as survivors and any of the other two roles will be by their own choosing.

• No role will be imposed automatically.

• The role of bandit is to be pretty much permanent, perhaps with some way to change ones way later on.

• The role of soldier is special and will be in effect when wearing clothing resembling a uniformed soldier (specifically wearing a particular uniform).

• The role of soldier should be temporary, limited to a 24 hour basis, after which anyone can take their unifom off and become a survivor again.

• It is important to differentiate between how the game mechanics work with the roles and how the game mechanics work with the various equipment associated with the roles (if any).

• The distinction made for a soldier and a survivor, is to reflect the tension and drama where armed strangers meet with other armed strangers, allowing bad things to happen, but without them becoming tagged as bandits. A uniformed soldier should be considered a potential bandit by survivors, however the soldier risk being gunned down if displaying an aggressive behavior (raised weapon).

• It is imperative for there to be some way to alway being able to get to know the name of the player (at least viewing a dogtag/drivers licence in the inventory, fixed object, preferably on the uniform/clothing)

• A system of penalizing a character (or perhaps any character linked with cd keys or somesuch), means worse aim, worse health, slower movement or other bad things that increase in severity with repeated offences.

• This system discourages a mixing of survivors with bandits or soldiers in a group of people (unless they are all trusted friends ofc).

About survivors

• A survivor is free to wound or kill bandits, with no penalties.

• A survivor is free to wound or kill a soldier in aggressive stance, but risk being covertly tagged as bandit if wounding or killing a soldier in passive stance.

• A survivor is to NOT wound or kill other survivors, doing so leads to severe penalties that are cumulative, which will not go away (unless choosing to switch to becoming a bandit).

About bandits

• All bandits are former survivors that made the explicit choice of becoming a bandit

• A survivor with crippling penalties will want to become a bandit to become care free and rid himself of the imposed penalties.

• All bandits are tagged as bandits in some way, like imposed bandit clothing or something to that effect, making them easily identifiable to others visually.

About soldiers

• Soldiers are allowed to wound and kill other soldiers regardless (as if they all were bandits).

• All soldiers must wear a uniform to be considered being in the soldier role/mode.

• Any survivor putting on a soldiers uniform, has to wear it on for 24 hours (for example) before being allowed to take it off.

• A basic mechanic for soldiers will be about expressing either a passive or aggressive stance (the raising/lowering of their weapon).

• A soldier with a lowered weapon is considered to be a survivor to other survivors, with regard to the player (soldier) not being a free kill in passive stance.

• A soldier with a raised weapon is considered to be a general threat, and is considered being a bandit with regard to the player a being free kill in aggressive stance.

• If a survivor wound or kill a soldier that express' a passive stance, that survivor is covertly tagged as bandit and is a free kill. Survior is also penalized.

• If a soldier wound or kill a survivor, the soldier is covertly tagged as a bandit and is a free kill. Soldier is also penalized.

Concerns

• A soldier that logs off cannot sit and wait for his mandatory 24 hour requirement to vanish.

• No bandit can become a soldier BUT he can wear a soldiers uniform together with this bandit tag (bandit clothing)

• A bandit should NOT be able to flip between being a bandit and a survivor

• All soldiers weaponry should really allow for displaying a passive and an aggressive stance (animation)

• A helicopter or vehicle crewed by a combination of bandits, survivors and soldiers might cause some odd issues. Haven't thought much about this.

• A player is (afaik) currently free to switch character and go play either being a bandit or a survivor. This seem at odds of the spirit of this system, so only one name should be allowed per cd key. Obviously, this way, buying an additional cd key for easily playing a different role resembles an exploit.

• Players exchanging cd keys with each other in order to switch roles seem to be another form of exploit.

• Penalizing movement speed is perhaps bad in context of playing with others, a stamina drain of sorts seem better. At least everyone can move at the same speed.

Summary

• Killing other players is generally bad, avoiding killing people is generally good, but with this system there will be an opportunity for doing either thing.

• Putting on a soldiers uniform, is like becoming a temporary bandit, with the limiation of not really being allowed to wound or kill survivors without being penalized.

• Any survivor or soldier having been covertly tagged as a bandit risk being identified and pursued by others. Inspecting a body to find the killer can be a good idea for this to work, although not being realistic.

• Anyone having been covertly tagged as a bandit might end up being treated as a free kill forever (like being a bandit, but still not allowed to kill other survivors). A bad reputation will thus have consequences, social complications might arise depending on how people want to treat you, knowing that you are coverty tagged as a bandit.

• There is nothing wrong with bandits having a survivor friend around to trick other survivors, but that one guy risk being attacked by other bandits again.

• There is no benefit in mixing soldiers with survivors in a group afaik.

• Night time fighting might be complicated. Best to properly identify any targets before opening fire.

• Perhaps the core mechanic of penalizing a character (or player with all his characters) could best be toggled off at night time if the whole idea for some reason doesn't work that well at night time.

Anyone finding a damning flaw with this, is welcome in pointing this out to me.

Edit: I removed a part of a sentence: "nobody will be punished by the game itself" under "summary", because it was inconsistent with what I wrote earlier. The whole sentence was cleaned up.

Edit2: Corrected an embarrasing mistake, where I wrote that bandits should be able to flip between being a bandit and a survivor. Might have been a mistake I made when/if I rewrote the sentence earlier.

Addendum

• I guess that with this idea, one could allow survivors being plagued by penalties, to put on a soldiers uniform, in order to temporarily remove the penalties for the duration of wearing the uniform.

• The whole point to penalizing bad behavior as a survivor, is to promote fair play, where the freedom to just shoot anyone for any reason at any time, is burdened with some restrictions either forced (penalties) or coerced (roles) onto the individual player.

• I guess that with a survivor becoming a soldier (for 24 hours at least), could remove some and all of the penalty a survivor get for killing other survivors, a penance of sorts where the "reward" kicks in after doing time as a soldier.

I imagined some kind of rock-paper-scissor theme for all of this earlier, but ultimately it never materialized into something that simple. At the very least one can notice some subtleties that I think people would appreciate, instead of simply wanting the freedom of playing heh chaotic neutral all the time.

Edited August 4, 2012 by Treehugger

[run4way 45]

There shouldn't be a penalties from game/engine, dayz looks like sandbox game where social factor it's main factor. When side chat was turned off, ppl stopped coop and start shoot on sight.

[yakine 31]

They removed the bandit skin because players shouldnt be punished for the path they take, its a sandbox game.

[thefreindlyoldman 47]

A soldier is considered a bandit for having his weapon raised for protection? Lol wut?

[decoman 45]

A soldier is considered a bandit for having his weapon raised for protection? Lol wut?

I realize now that it would be awkward for a soldier killing zombies to have a survivor around, that could just sit and wait for the soldier to raise his rifle to get a "free" kill. :D

Ugh, give me a minute (holy crap I have to solve this problem).

Edit:

Solution: A survivor killing a soldier with a raised weapon, becomes a free kill for 24 hours. That means that any other soldier on site can respond to the gunfire and kill the survivor immediately, or sometime within 24 hours of game time (sitting out the timer logged off should't work).

Putting on a soldiers uniform have the benefit of being able to kill other soldiers for free, but with the risk being attacked by survivors. Only put on a uniform if playing with friends and having balls. :) Soldiers should thus not walk around alone but stay with their group. :D

Concern: This soldier killing done by survivors might become a sport, like some kind of quasi bandit role.

If a soldier can have the habit of lowering/raising his weapon all the time, I think few if any survivors would bother trying to fire at a soldier knowing that they risk being penalized if firing at a soldier with his weapon lowered.

Edit2:

A simple way to discourage a survivor sitting around trying to kill a soldier from a distance, could be to have a range requirement of less than 50m for example, in order for discouraging sniper fire.

Hm, perhaps the same rules of not displaying an aggressive stance could apply to survivors in proxy of soldiers, with the same distance requirement of less than 50m. Then ideally any survivor and soldier would prefer to keep some distance from each other.

Edited August 5, 2012 by Treehugger

[decoman 45]

They removed the bandit skin because players shouldnt be punished for the path they take, its a sandbox game.

The bandit skin would be self imposed in this case. Ofc, the alternative would be to stay around as a survivor without any obvious bandit clothing suffering an increasing amount of debilitating penalties.

I fail to see any point at all in the argument that DayZ is "a sandbox game". I suggest fair play, as opposed to a chaotic free for all.

Edited August 4, 2012 by Treehugger

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

Why should it be a fair fight?

It's supposed to be chaotic. It's supposed to be harsh. It's supposed to be brutal. That's what makes it unique.

[decoman 45]

Fair probably doesn't mean what you think it means.

By implying that the game should not be fair, I think hackers will rejoice of your attitude. So obviously, some definition of "fair" would be helpful.

Fair in this case with my idea, would simply mean an aggreement to common rules that are not designed to discriminate against anyone, which also pertain to how the game actually works (clothing, etc).

Feel free to tell me how you would want to define "fair" with respect to how the game ought to work.

Btw, I played Eve online for years, so at the very least I am not a stranger to sandbox games.

As for sandbox games, I like the notion of something I read somewhere, that the players should be given tools to make structures. Fascinating stuff. So I will admit that the design of basic game mechanics might end up working against some idea that would otherwise be possible. Ofc, it would surely be absurd to flat out state such a controversy without actually having specified or generalized some a problem that one can relate to.

I want to add that I think the idea of a sandbox is particulary important to the people designing a game, preferably making sure things don't fall apart if parts of the game is changed, reworked or removed.

Edited August 4, 2012 by Treehugger

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

Fair probably doesn't mean what you think it means.

By implying that the game should not be fair, I think hackers will rejoice of your attitude. So obviously, some definition of "fair" would be helpful.

Fair in this case with my idea, would simply mean an aggreement to common rules that are not designed to discriminate against anyone, which also pertain to how the game actually works (clothing, etc).

Feel free to tell me how you would want to define "fair" with respect to how the game ought to work.

Btw, I played Eve online for years, so at the very least I am not a stranger to sandbox games.

As for sandbox games, I like the notion of something I read somewhere, that the players should be given tools to make structures. Fascinating stuff. So I will admit that the design of basic game mechanics might end up working against some idea that would otherwise be possible. Ofc, it would surely be absurd to flat out state such a controversy without actually having specified or generalized some a problem that one can relate to.

I want to add that I think the idea of a sandbox is particulary important to the people designing a game, preferably making sure things don't fall apart if parts of the game is changed, reworked or removed.

I find your tone slightly patronising, but maybe that's just me.

Your original point about making the game "fair" mentioned nothing about hacking. That is an entirely different debate. Your idea is to make the game "fair" by introducing contrived mechanics. It's an over engineered solution to a problem that doesn't exsist.

[indominator 95]

well, tell me, how can you distinguish a person in real life if he is a bandit or not? you cant, can be anyone so shut up.

[decoman 45]

@ Fraggle

It is fairly obvious that you inferred your own meaning to my use of "fair", though you omitted to state any particular problem with anything to do with something being "fair". None of my ideas has anything to do with a fair fight in the sense of holding peoples hands, but has to do with the *conditions* in a fight that is specifically aimed at interesting gameplay and not really providing "roles" for others to follow as I suspect you interpreted my idea as being.

This sort of allowed me to point out an example about a context where a suspect attitude against things fair or fairness could quite possibly imply a free reign of hacking or use of scripts, because a general sentiment *against* fairness might as well include any and all all options a player might want to field in a game. Since scripting and hacking probably isn't acceptable as metagaming by most people including you, I still find such a problem relevant now that I am writing about it here, because, if someone exploits a game, then some regular gamers is probably tempted for arguing to be "allowed" to do the same for making things more "fair".

To elaborate on what I just wrote, ruling out hacking as a tool for the player on grounds of it not being fair, there are two implications in the sense of fairness. One being that about special privileges (hacking/scripting), the other an idea of being equally invested into the functioning of the game, two wildly different things, but also being somewhat similar as a sentimental concept. Imposed speed limits on a road might be a similar example, people who want to drive fast for some reason can go drive on the highway, the rules would still be the same for everyone. Obviously, using a speed limit analogy doesn't really translate to this game, but goes to show that "fair" conditions can be understood as a wide ranging concept, that has nothing to do with traditionally sentimental ideas with regard to roles. I recall having read lots of suggestions on the internet for games where people talk about "roles" and "fairness" being stuck with notions of what they already like and are used to, but I simply wanted to point out possibilities with imposed limitations that still made for interesting gameplay without forcing people to play in a certain way just because I had some ideas.

Edit: Hm, I think I have been a little dishonest here in alluding to never having had any particular motivation for my idea, because I did want to avoid having survivors simply going around killing other survivors. :)

Edited August 4, 2012 by Treehugger

[bazbake 456]

I like where this is going, but it triggered a different idea. I'll post that.

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

Well, your response is over elaborate, a bit like your original idea. Let's agree to disagree.

Much love.