AI Death squads, bullet lethality and delayed disconnect

[=MeRk= Morbo513 1]

TL;DR

AI squads with decent gear come after PvP centric players

High humanity players get supply drops within a certain radius at a random time

Less bullet damage, more frequent and longer knock-down

Player character lingers for a while after D/C

Normal smoke nades alongside decoy smokes

AI Death squads:

After a player has reached certain criteria (Rate of murders, humanity threshold), a squad of AI troops (Numbers debatable) spawns in at the closest (Northern or Western) map edge, and tracks down the player, murdering any other players within a certain distance. They should avoid towns so as to not waste time and ammo killing zombies. They should have pretty good equipment - one of the group with a possibility of NVGs, several with assault rifles, one MG and one marksman rifle, but not necessarily with much ammo, all consistent in their armament - all NATO or Warsaw pact. Misc equipment like navigational aids and optics would be randomized. If the player they're hunting disconnects, their position and equipment is saved and they despawn, only coming back once their target reconnects (This would prevent DCing to get rid of them). If it's possible to incorporate the blood system, they should have a multiple of the regular amount.

Use of an AI mod may make them more fun to fight while increasing their competence (I'd recommend ASR)

This system would provide both a deterrent and an incentive to reach these criteria; If you trigger a death squad there's the risk that you die, but there's the reward in the gear that they're carrying themselves.

The margins between death squad triggers should be constant, but each time you do trigger one they increase in size, skill and/or quality of gear, perhaps.

As an incentive for increasing your humanity, something like supply drops near your position would be nice, because at the moment the only reasons to help people is so that you have more on your side in a firefight, or to betray them later.

I read another suggestion where once humanity reaches an upper threshold, your model changes much like the bandits, maybe to a Police, or BLUFOR model.

Also, KSK Desert uniforms in a woodland environment!?

Carrot and stick.

On the subject of humanity and murders, however, there is the problem of the circumstances of you killing somebody - The person you killed may have attacked you first or otherwise antagonised you.

Bullet Lethality:

At the moment, I believe that the PvP damage system isn't too great. 9mm rounds are piss-weak (the phrase piss-weak and 9mm go hand in hand) while anything equal to or heavier than a 7.62 is usually an instant kill (Especially the .303 British). In my opinion, bullets should never be one-hit-kills unless it's to the head, as it currently is (although I believe that should be probability based). But at the moment, the margins between calibres are too great, and if you have any less than 10k blood anything above 5.56/5.45 will take less than two hits to kill you, while the latter two rounds may take several bursts.

What I propose is drastically increasing the chance and length of knockdown alongside a reduction of the damage done by bullets. It's very frustrating when in a group, one of them gets shot once and they've bled out or instantly died before you can deal with the damage. A long incapacitation time would give other members of a group time to retaliate as well as move or treat the casualty, thus encouraging teamwork. However if a player does get hit, he will almost definitely go down, meaning no dissatisfaction for the assailant - If the target's on their own, the shooter can fire until they're dead.

This brings me on to another addition; Damage to incapacitated players should be greatly increased - Again if the player's alone this is not an issue for the attacker as they can simply follow up with one or two shots, but if the target is with a group, the attacker will have to shift his focus for the time being.

As for headshots, they should incur a very long incapacitation time and a lot of damage, with a relatively high chance of instant death depending on calibre, range etc, but again, it's nice to have the chance to heal someone up if you've dealt with your attacker.

Delayed Disconnect:

This one's pretty simple in theory: When a player leaves the server, their character should linger for 1-2 minutes. This would disencourage the act of alt-f4ing or plain disconnecting when under fire or being attacked by zombies - It'd force a player to get to safety before D/Cing, otherwise their opposition would be able to kill them. There is the problem of people coming across your body within those few minutes, or perhaps someone you're travelling with using it as an opportunity to betray you. But I don't currently have the mental capacity to work out a solution.

Inert Smoke Grenades:

Regular smoke grenades that behave as normal; they don't attract zombies from long distance - White smoke for regular, zombie decoy can be the coloured ones.

[shiromikan 217]

AI Death Squads: Sounds interesting... But, there will be the case of self defense (I've seen pretty large firefights...). Then you have angry AI with elite weaponry coming after you. (Scary thought, in my opinion... :O) Then there is the smart guy with a sniper rifle:

- Trigger Death Squad event.

- Wait on top of mountain with a very large distance to run across without cover.

- Kill them all before they even pose a slight threat and loot the elite gear.

Supply Drops: Another interesting idea... But, isn't the plan for Humanity to regenerate until it has reached it's maximum? I see potential for abuse. But, what did you think you'd find in said drops? I'm curious as to what you had in mind.

Bullet's damage: I personally think a bullet is a bullet. If you get shot in life, it's going to fucking hurt. I completely disdain the notion of headshots being on chance alone. You should be rewarded for you skill and accuracy (or dumb luck).

Delayed Disconnects: Has been touched upon many times by many people. I personally like Griff's idea of an optional DC that takes 30 seconds-ish to ensure safety of character.

Inert Smokes: Why? Can zombies not see the color white? xD

Edit: It's clear you've put a lot of thought into these suggestions. I like some of them. :D!

[=MeRk= Morbo513 1]

AI Death Squads: Sounds interesting... But' date=' there will be the case of self defense (I've seen pretty large firefights...). Then you have angry AI with elite weaponry coming after you. (Scary thought, in my opinion... :O)[/quote']

Yeah, as I said, the humanity/murder system doesn't really take self-defence into account which is a bit jammy.

Then there is the smart guy with a sniper rifle:

- Trigger Death Squad event.

- Wait on top of mountain with a very large distance to run across without cover.

- Kill them all before they even pose a slight threat and loot the elite gear.

Like you say, players should be rewarded for their skill. But the idea is that the player doesn't know when they've triggered it; I neglected to mention that the death squads would spawn at a random time after criteria are reached.

Supply Drops: Another interesting idea... But, isn't the plan for Humanity to regenerate until it has reached it's maximum? I see potential for abuse. But, what did you think you'd find in said drops? I'm curious as to what you had in mind.

Yeah, I did totally forget about the regeneration. I don't know the numbers, but say 5k is the current maximum for regeneration, if you reach 7.5k+ through positive action (depending on how much humanity is gained per action) that'd trigger it.

Bullet's damage: I personally think a bullet is a bullet. If you get shot in life, it's going to fucking hurt. I completely disdain the notion of headshots being on chance alone. You should be rewarded for you skill and accuracy (or dumb luck).

As a matter of fact, a high proportion of GSWs sustained in real life are non-lethal, provided the casualty is dealt with in a timely fashion. The attacker could still easily kill a lone player, or even one of a group if he concentrates his fire on the downed player. I've had too many of my friends die to a single gunshot from nowhere, and myself in several cases.

I favour games which have an incapacitation system rather than outright death; It allows a group to remain cohesive if one of them goes down, but the threat of death remains - Basically, a player gets shot and he's out of the fight, but the long incap timer and low damage is there to give their friends a chance to patch them up after dealing with the attacker. It'd also give epinephrine more purpose, to get an incap'd player straight back in.

Delayed Disconnects: Has been touched upon many times by many people. I personally like Griff's idea of an optional DC that takes 30 seconds-ish to ensure safety of character.

Yeah, even 30 seconds would do it. Again, I've had a lot of people disconnect on me while I've been firing at them, and I've abused the system myself to get away from massive swarms of zombies.

Inert Smokes: Why? Can zombies not see the color white? xD

I'd like to think that the current smoke grenades have some form of chemical that attracts the zombies, like L4D2's bile canisters. Regular smokes would be nice for the purpose they exist, which is provision of visual cover.

[shiromikan 217]

"Like you say, players should be rewarded for their skill. But the idea is that the player doesn't know when they've triggered it; I neglected to mention that the death squads would spawn at a random time after criteria are reached."

Well, that's a scary thought. I suppose if you don't have knowledge of your contracted demise, you couldn't really abuse it efficiently (you still could mass-kill from the mountain... But, without knowledge of time (or if they've even been triggered at all), I suppose it'd be boring to sit on a hilltop all day.

"Yeah, I did totally forget about the regeneration. I don't know the numbers, but say 5k is the current maximum for regeneration, if you reach 7.5k+ through positive action (depending on how much humanity is gained per action) that'd trigger it."

That sounds like a difficult task. Making getting 'drops' worth the risk of repeated positive actions. I certainly like this more than the Death Squad. :P

"As a matter of fact, a high proportion of GSWs sustained in real life are non-lethal, provided the casualty is dealt with in a timely fashion. The attacker could still easily kill a lone player, or even one of a group if he concentrates his fire on the downed player. I've had too many of my friends die to a single gunshot from nowhere, and myself in several cases."

Yeah, the majority of wounds are also with low caliber weapons in not-so-important parts of the body. But, oh, I didn't think about exactly what you meant. I don't know... This subject is a bit touchy as there are instances where a shot could be lethal. (One shot - One Kill motto comes to mind). It's too late for me to be thinking into complex balancing, but... The general premise of "I shouldn't have died from being shot in the arm" is valid.

"I'd like to think that the current smoke grenades have some form of chemical that attracts the zombies, like L4D2's bile canisters. Regular smokes would be nice for the purpose they exist, which is provision of visual cover."

Hm, yeah. I understand. I always thought the zombies would have saw the smoke and though, "thefuck?" - I think smokes should still provoke some kind of reaction... but, maybe a smaller one? Or one that can't be seen from as far (By the zombies)? I don't know.. Further discussion on this topic would be interesting.

P.s. I'm not using the quotes as I'm very small laptop in my bed using a trackpad which makes coordinating multiple quotations difficult.

[abysmal 2]

As a matter of fact' date=' a high proportion of GSWs sustained in real life are non-lethal, provided the casualty is dealt with in a timely fashion.

[/quote']

By far the majority of gunshot wounds that occur are from .22s, which are not even modeled in ARMA. Furthermore, many of these incidents only involve a single shot, which is rare for an ARMA engagement. The lethality for multiple gunshot wounds is exponentially higher than one, which is compounded by the fact that subsequent gunshot wounds vastly compromise the effectiveness of body armor.

[naizarak 41]

I see you're taking the Fallout approach to morality, but that would contradict the very nature of this mod - a completely open-ended, free, player-run world with no artificial policing of any kind.

[=MeRk= Morbo513 1]

The lethality for multiple gunshot wounds is exponentially higher than one' date=' which is compounded by the fact that subsequent gunshot wounds vastly compromise the effectiveness of body armor.

[/quote']

And that's exactly what I believe should happen. I'm not saying "allow people to not die from several wounds", I'm saying "Minimize the lethality of a single shot". Even if we're not going by realism, it'd make for better gameplay by encouraging teamwork.

As for the death squads, maybe a squad is a bit excessive, yes. Everyone would know the criteria for triggeing them after a while so they can be somewhat prepared. I was thinking, maybe either 1 or 2 AI troops, increasing in weapons tiers as someone goes. Maybe even have players given the task, and if the assassin disconnects the task is passed on to the next free player, maybe only allowed past a certain survival time, and the ability to accept/decline/disable.

[anothermartz 0]

I think a lot of people really misunderstand gameplay and balance when they agree with the fact that you can get instantly killed by some random guy taking pot shots for their own enjoyment of ruining yours because "that's realistic and that's that.".

Random PKers are the biggest problem with this game because there's nothing to stop them, even if you kill them they'll just respawn and continue. Although instead of having AI come in and potentially kill innocent survivors or have survivors kill the AI to loot them and save the PKers, I think there should just be a survivor only radio dedicated to PKers' last seen locations in the form of map co-ordinates so people can place markers and hunt them.

Right now bandits are announced in side channel but bandits see it and move to a slightly new spot to camp there until they are spotted again, it's also ALL bandits that are announced and not just asshole PKers doing it because they're bored.

I can imagine a PKer could have fun with people coming to hunt them and they have to be good to defend themselves but at least: 1. They'd have to be good to survive with the disadvantage unlike now where they have barely any and 2. The people they'll be against will acknowledge that it's risky business to kill a PKer and so dying by them won't be unexpected. The kill count could have a cool down time so if they switch server, the new server will just alert people of their presense and they could get out of being a PKer by stopping to kill players for a while.

I really like the idea of a headshot making someone incapacitated for a long time, it works out for both sides of an attack because the killer can still take you down easily if you're alone or unorganized and a member of a good team can still survive getting unfairly taken out by someone who doesn't even care about ambushing you because they're just shooting whoever they can.

Because of the wait of an inevetable death, some people might even click respawn to commit suicide instead of waiting to recover or could get eaten by zombies so you actually do kill them in one hit. Or you might not even need to actually finish them off if you could steal their gear when they're unconscious, at least for the victim they won't be teleported to the coast and it's doubtful that you'd take absolutely everything from them and leave behind nothing, maybe only robbing them won't lose as much humanity at the expense of running away before they wake up and kill you.

Hell this even creates potential for scenarios where you could be incapacitated and wake up after being dragged to a warehouse with your weapons stripped and a bandit interrogating you about where your tent is. It'll actually add the "roleplay" back into to RPG.

[B4N3 0]

TL;DR

AI squads with decent gear come after PvP centric players

High humanity players get supply drops within a certain radius at a random time

Less bullet damage' date=' more frequent and longer knock-down

Player character lingers for a while after D/C

Normal smoke nades alongside decoy smokes

AI Death squads:

After a player has reached certain criteria (Rate of murders, humanity threshold), a squad of AI troops (Numbers debatable) spawns in at the closest (Northern or Western) map edge, and tracks down the player, murdering any other players within a certain distance. They should avoid towns so as to not waste time and ammo killing zombies. They should have pretty good equipment - one of the group with a possibility of NVGs, several with assault rifles, one MG and one marksman rifle, but not necessarily with much ammo, all consistent in their armament - all NATO or Warsaw pact. Misc equipment like navigational aids and optics would be randomized. If the player they're hunting disconnects, their position and equipment is saved and they despawn, only coming back once their target reconnects (This would prevent DCing to get rid of them). If it's possible to incorporate the blood system, they should have a multiple of the regular amount.

Use of an AI mod may make them more fun to fight while increasing their competence (I'd recommend ASR)

This system would provide both a deterrent and an incentive to reach these criteria; If you trigger a death squad there's the risk that you die, but there's the reward in the gear that they're carrying themselves.

The margins between death squad triggers should be constant, but each time you do trigger one they increase in size, skill and/or quality of gear, perhaps.

As an incentive for increasing your humanity, something like supply drops near your position would be nice, because at the moment the only reasons to help people is so that you have more on your side in a firefight, or to betray them later.

I read another suggestion where once humanity reaches an upper threshold, your model changes much like the bandits, maybe to a Police, or BLUFOR model.

Also, KSK Desert uniforms in a woodland environment!?

Carrot and stick.

On the subject of humanity and murders, however, there is the problem of the circumstances of you killing somebody - The person you killed may have attacked you first or otherwise antagonised you.

Bullet Lethality:

At the moment, I believe that the PvP damage system isn't too great. 9mm rounds are piss-weak (the phrase piss-weak and 9mm go hand in hand) while anything equal to or heavier than a 7.62 is usually an instant kill (Especially the .303 British). In my opinion, bullets should never be one-hit-kills unless it's to the head, as it currently is (although I believe that should be probability based). But at the moment, the margins between calibres are too great, and if you have any less than 10k blood anything above 5.56/5.45 will take less than two hits to kill you, while the latter two rounds may take several bursts.

What I propose is drastically increasing the chance and length of knockdown alongside a reduction of the damage done by bullets. It's very frustrating when in a group, one of them gets shot once and they've bled out or instantly died before you can deal with the damage. A long incapacitation time would give other members of a group time to retaliate as well as move or treat the casualty, thus encouraging teamwork. However if a player does get hit, he will almost definitely go down, meaning no dissatisfaction for the assailant - If the target's on their own, the shooter can fire until they're dead.

This brings me on to another addition; Damage to incapacitated players should be greatly increased - Again if the player's alone this is not an issue for the attacker as they can simply follow up with one or two shots, but if the target is with a group, the attacker will have to shift his focus for the time being.

As for headshots, they should incur a very long incapacitation time and a lot of damage, with a relatively high chance of instant death depending on calibre, range etc, but again, it's nice to have the chance to heal someone up if you've dealt with your attacker.

Delayed Disconnect:

This one's pretty simple in theory: When a player leaves the server, their character should linger for 1-2 minutes. This would disencourage the act of alt-f4ing or plain disconnecting when under fire or being attacked by zombies - It'd force a player to get to safety before D/Cing, otherwise their opposition would be able to kill them. There is the problem of people coming across your body within those few minutes, or perhaps someone you're travelling with using it as an opportunity to betray you. But I don't currently have the mental capacity to work out a solution.

Inert Smoke Grenades:

Regular smoke grenades that behave as normal; they don't attract zombies from long distance - White smoke for regular, zombie decoy can be the coloured ones.

[/quote']

1. Upon full read, no, completely unrealistic punishment for people killing to survive. Dumb.

2. Bullets should for the most part be lethal. I'd hate having to pump 3-4 rounds into someone to kill them with a high caliber weapon, totally unrealistic.

3. Only if the player has taken damage, if not this will just end up with people stumbling upon players who are logging out. If a player has taken damage then they can't log out for X amount of seconds.

4. Maybe, not really sure how I feel about it.

Respectively, imho.

[rocket 16567]

Spawning in AI to run around and shoot will be very problematic, beyond very small numbers being spawned in as part of some side missions.

ArmA2 is already running close (beyond?) its limits with 50 players, 500 zombies, and 1000's of bodies and loot spawns. Spawning in AI, even locally controlled, they will have very erratic behavior and also quite likely run into the dreaded "max group" bug.

RE: Lingering player characters.

All objects, zombies, etc... are spawned locally (i.e. on player computers). The server only synchronizes with the database. When that player disconnects, those objects are transferred to the control of the server. The server then plays "hot potato" with those items, as it is running very close to capacity at the best of times.

Hence, the minute a player's avatar and any zombies they were controlling are handed over - it disposes of them as quickly as possible. The server deletes the zombies immediately. The players avatar has its state saved to the database, then it is deleted too.

The current PVP punishment system applies locally, but is being expanded to be synchronized across all servers together with rapid login/logout cooldowns to prevent ammo exploitation.

[shiromikan 217]

Isn't that something we all forget about when it comes time to suggest new content; can the servers handle this and how difficult is it to implement?

[anothermartz 0]

I hear the common phrase of "anything but one hit kills is unrealistic".

Well, Morpheme to fix your broken legs is unrealistic, running forever is unrealistic, respawning as a new character after you die is unrealistic and plenty of other game mechanics are unrealistic because they are game mechanics to make the game more balanced and enjoyable.

So if you can accept these unrealistic mechanics, why are one hit kills unacceptable for the pure reason of unrealism? No one ever gives any other reason for one hit kills to be in the game apart from realism.

[rocket 16567]

Just as an aside, I prefer the term "authentic". It's more relevant to talk about what is authentic, than what is real. Because you end up in this crazy philosophical loop talking about what is real or not when playing a computer game.

So perhaps, it might be best to consider replacing "realistic" with "authentic" whenever someone uses the term, because I think - generally speaking - that's what they mean. I.e. "I can't suspend my disbelief on this point because its not authentic enough." Everyone has a different tolerance for varying levels of authenticity.

A classic example, the Winchester is a shotgun in game. Which, of course, is complete bollocks. I haven't had the time to change and 99% of people don't give a shit. Those that notice don't seem to mind its lack of "authenticity" because it doesn't effect their suspension of disbelief.

[anothermartz 0]

I don't think changing the word from realistic to authentic really changes anything about getting instakilled by another player, it is very immersion breaking and incredibly frustrating to have the screen seemingly randomly say "YOU ARE DEAD!" because a PKer shoots you from a distance for their own fun of destroying your playthrough.

I'm not against PvP; I adore the idea of bandits killing survivors to get their gear instead of scavanging it from towns but the current system allows for people to have their game instantly reset by anyone for no reason and I think this is very game breaking.

The incapacitation idea adds more authenticity to a murder than multiple shots for a kill takes away. Helmets and body armour could make it more convincing if it really matters that much.

[=MeRk= Morbo513 1]

People don't seem to understand what I'm getting at with the ballistic damage thing. Anothermartz understood it pretty well though. I'll reiterate:

1: Same or larger chance of bullets causing incapacitation

2: Bullets do less damage/players have more health

3: Incapacitation timer is much longer

B4N3 - If you were to shoot someone, they would (most likely) go down. They would have a very low chance of immediate death, but you could leave for 5 minutes and come back and they'd probably still be incap'd - By that time they'd have bled out or been munched on, or just respawned. You could still send a second shot into them, and if you're using a 7.##mm weapon, this second shot would most likely kill them.

I'd prefer this to a revival system because it still carries the chance of irreversible death, especially if the player's on their own, while still giving players they're working with a chance to save them. Also, it isn't dissatisfying for the attacker, because the player he shot would be out of the fight until tended to.

Think about it this way; as it is currently, me and buddy walk into open field. Buddy gets shot. Buddy dies before I even get over to him.

With this idea: Me and buddy walk into open field. Buddy gets shot and goes down. I could drag him into cover and then engage the enemy without having to immediately worry about his health. If I win the firefight, I can get to work patching him up. He'd still need a lot of blood replacing and I may not have the necessary medical supplies to get him otherwise functional.

On the other hand, if I get shot and go down myself, there's no way either of us would be getting back up unless we were lucky enough to not bleed out if the attacker were to leave.

On the subject of the death squads, yeah, I did think it'd cause strain on the servers, but it's an idea anyway. And in response to B4N3, it would be triggered after a large number of PvP kills, maybe within a certain length of time. At the moment there's little to deter PvPers and there's no player run "Police" force since everyone's too disorganised. I'm not one of those people who dislikes PvP, but at the moment, killing someone carries little consequence.

[Gaidoon 19]

Wow nice thread I'm surprised it was wasting away I like this idea except being able to look the death squads.

[thorgold 91]

Wow nice thread I'm surprised it was wasting away I like this idea except being able to look the death squads.

You obviously missed the part where Rocket explained why these ideas weren't workable or weren't useful.

[IzYouFaggot 4]

Not fan of the supply drops and death squads, mainly because it removes the solitude, making it more human and "warm". Otherwise agreed

If you still want deathsquads make them fully clothed and conceiled and have their voices distorted so as to scare the player

[rpatto92@hotmail.com 26]

By far the majority of gunshot wounds that occur are from .22s, which are not even modeled in ARMA. Furthermore, many of these incidents only involve a single shot, which is rare for an ARMA engagement. The lethality for multiple gunshot wounds is exponentially higher than one, which is compounded by the fact that subsequent gunshot wounds vastly compromise the effectiveness of body armor.

Well said sir: those damage should never be probability based. Damage should be based on: power, velocity, caliber and accuracy verse armor, health and position. Basically like a table top card game; you trade the values off against one and other.

Except that this is in real time; giving you less time to consider the cards, the uncertainty of values and your ability to predict them within a certain degree of accuracy. Essentially all the cards are stacked you've just got to figure out which once to choose and fast.

[CreepySalad 108]

I dislike all of these ideas. Sorry.

[rpatto92@hotmail.com 26]

People don't seem to understand what I'm getting at with the ballistic damage thing. Anothermartz understood it pretty well though. I'll reiterate:

1: Same or larger chance of bullets causing incapacitation

2: Bullets do less damage/players have more health

3: Incapacitation timer is much longer

B4N3 - If you were to shoot someone, they would (most likely) go down. They would have a very low chance of immediate death, but you could leave for 5 minutes and come back and they'd probably still be incap'd - By that time they'd have bled out or been munched on, or just respawned.

I think people understand perfectly fine; so I've cut out all the other bits and highlighted the main point here. Either you don't understand why probability or "chance" is such a bad word when it comes to damage values or you don't understand it's meaning and have failed to elaborate with others.

If anything related to player actions in a game, relies on chance. It immediately throws up warning signs because it enables possibility of random bullshit; which players like to avoid at all costs. An that is why most games use value based reactions not probability. Probability has it's place but it's outside of any features within or affecting a players control.

[liquidcactus 719]

haha, deathsquads ! I'm guessing morbo513 is relatively new to dayz ^_^

[-Gews- 7443]

I think people understand perfectly fine; so I've cut out all the other bits and highlighted the main point here. Either you don't understand why probability or "chance" is such a bad word when it comes to damage values or you don't understand it's meaning and have failed to elaborate with others.

Chance needs to be incorporated into the bullet damage. Bullets don't do a fixed amount of damage, in real life the terminal effects can vary wildly.

More powerful rounds should have a high likelihood of doing a lot of damage.

Less powerful rounds should have a small likelihood of doing a lot of damage.

But both the weaker and stronger rounds should have a chance of doing less damage than "normal", as well as massive damage or outright killing with a single shot.

The larger the round the better chances of a quick kill - but not a certain outcome.

Edit: Actually, I was just thinking... if any of you have played one of those games like Dungeons & Dragons, you've used dice to roll for damage. That in itself is already more "advanced" than the damage systems in most games, and incorporating chance would be much like incorporating a kind of virtual die.

Edited April 2, 2013 by Gews

[-Guardian- 206]

haha, deathsquads ! I'm guessing morbo513 is relatively new to dayz ^_^

This post was resurrected from over 10 months ago, im sure he was new back when he made the post in April of 2012.

Edited April 2, 2013 by -Guardian-

[rpatto92@hotmail.com 26]

Chance needs to be incorporated into the bullet damage. Bullets don't do a fixed amount of damage, in real life the terminal effects can vary wildly.

More powerful rounds should have a high likelihood of doing a lot of damage.

Less powerful rounds should have a small likelihood of doing a lot of damage.

But both the weaker and stronger rounds should have a chance of doing less damage than "normal", as well as massive damage or outright killing with a single shot.

The larger the round the better chances of a quick kill - but not a certain outcome.

Edit: Actually, I was just thinking... if any of you have played one of those games like Dungeons & Dragons, you've used dice to roll for damage. That in itself is already more "advanced" than the damage systems in most games, and incorporating chance would be much like incorporating a kind of virtual die.

Probability or "chance" only applies to predicting the outcome of events in the "real world" not determining the event itself. The "real world" isn't random; the culmination of multiple variables determines the outcome of an event. Many variables gives the perceived illusion of events being unpredictable and random. So if you take account of enough variables; you can portray an event accurately and as long as players don't have the exact values, some things will still be perceived as being unpredictable. If you don't have rules and set values; the game world would figuratively explode, it just wouldn't work.

There's a reason dice rolls work in table top games like D&D and 40K because they don't happen in real time, they're turn based and predictable within varying degrees; try rolling a real time dice game. This is similar to how people perceive there to be a limit on the amount of frames per second the human eye can distinguish between; when in fact we don't see images as frames at all, we only notice the inconstancy when they drop bellow a certain rate.

Games can have thresholds; you have a range of damage in which a bullet can do. That threshold can change based on other variables, like: distance, damage, accuracy, health, condition, even: heat, wind, rain, or fog. The depth of the simulation is up to the game designer. If everything was completely random; you could be standing still and break a leg without any input.