The unOFFICIAL bandit skin discussion thread: POST HERE

[ArrThePirate 13]

Im a really new player of Dayz (I only have 18 hours played) and although I can't consider myself an expert on the mod, I'm a veteran videogame player who has experienced the "Bandit" philosophy in several other online games (FPS, RTS, MMORPG, etc) People trying to make it difficult to other players have always existed and they will forever exist, in my opinion, due to the nature of human beings. Let me tell you first that I'm not complaining in this post. I have no problem with the Survivor/Bandit system as it is right now, and I even found some of the anecdotes below, fun and sometimes hilarious.

Now, let me tell you 3 short stoies about my interaction with Bandits, that makes me think the Bandit system has to stay, but needs some modifications to prevent players from abusing it.

Story 1: I'm cheking buildings in Cherno looking for the precious loot we all want, I leave a building and I stop in the middle of the street to check the place and to decide which way to go next. I hear shots, I get the blurry vision effect on my screen and I realize someone wants to kill me. I run and try to find a place to hide and I find a tower with 3 stories. I got up to the 3rd level and look for my agressor, I only have a handgun with me and when I finally see him I start shooting at him. He realizes that Im in the tower and get gets inside and shoots me with some rifle. I did not die immediately, and as I was on the ground bleeding, I could see the Bandit leaving the building. He did not take anything from me, he didn't even check my stuff. He just killed me because he could and I lost all of my progress (which wasn't much anyway, but I think you get my point).

Story 2: It's around 8 p.m. (in-game) and I'm in Elektro now, this was in a veteran server and as some of you know, player's names are not displayed when you are pointing at them at any time, so the chat was full of messages like 'The guy thowing flares in Kamehka, are you firendly?' 'Dude in the hospital in Cherno, friendly?', etcetrera.

So this 'new' guy enters the game and he starts writing in the chat how he just started the game and such, and he then starts the following conversation (note that I'm paraphrasing):

- 'New' guy: And why do I have this military uniform and scarf around my face?

- Some player 1: Well, that means you are a Bandit because you killed someone.

- 'New' guy: Oh alright. But I don't want to be a Bandit, how do I change my appearance back to normal?

- Some player 2: You have to help someone else, put a bandage or give a blood transfusion.

- 'New' guy: Oh, ok. So where are you now? Let me help you. I don't want to be a Bandit :(

After a few minutes looking for someone to 'help', he moves to Elektro and asks who is throwing flares. Well, thats was me so I reply in the chat, and I offer him to be my medic: I fight zombies and he can put bandages on me if I get hurt. So there he is standing in front of me with his 'accidental' Bandit skin, and he starts to shoot me. I run and hide behind a small house and try to escape (Im still not that good to aim and shoot on this game) I leave my cover to enter a big building and shoots at me again. I try to get to the upper levels of the building but I fall to the ground, wounded, and I look back to to try and do him some damage before I die. He attracted the nearby zombies while attacking me, and now he's been attacked by 4 or 5 zombies. He logs out and disappears from the game.

Story 3: I start a new game again in the same server where 'New Accidental Bandit' killed me, not really caring about what happened since it was a fairly new character, and as usual there is a lot of chatter about places, about players teaming up, about the game, etc. A grp of players decide to make a campsite, with a tent (or tents, don't remember well) and a campfire since it's getting cold and their temp is decreasing. People is joining the group and they talk about plans to join forces and explore cities, etc. I keep moving trying to find the nearest village to get some loot and to stop losing my temp. A few minutes later, the group of players in the campsite are not talking anymore, about 3 or 4 players stopped writing for a while, and when one of them seems to be back in the game and starts writing in the chat, a player send this message:

"Did you like my grenade over there at your campsite?"

This guy, reading the chat, approched the campsite and killed 3 or 4 players with a grenade, just for the fun of it.

So why exactly should the Bandit system stay? The stories you just read are the reason why. If there will be players like this in the game, there should be some in-game consecuence for the way they play the game and interact with others. It definitely is not fair to make someone who has killed 21 survivors, look like the rest of us. To trick and kill another players, ruining their games and get away with it only changing skins (if generic skins for everyone to get are implemented) and profile name. They need to know that following the Bandit way will make people recognize you and attack you on sight just as another zombie.

And this is also why the Humanity system has to change. The amount of negative points someone receives for killing another player should increase with the number of victims, so players defending themselves would not be badly affected by this system, guving them an oportunity to recover those points with a few good deeds, but for those accumulating certain number of murders, the Bandit skin or skins and status should appear, and the way to lose it should be harder for them.

It could be more or less like this (example) :

1st survivor kill: -100 humanity

2nd survivor kill: -300 ...

3rd survivor kill: -500 ...

4th survivor kill: -700 ...

5th survivor kill: -1500 ...

6th survivor kill: -3000 --> Bandit skin

Please note this is an example, the system and the requirements could be different, but you can see how with a system like this, accidentally killing another survivor or defending themselves, would not have big consequences for innocent survivors and would make survivor killers more notorious giving them a Bandit skin. To avoid the abuse of this system, give every 'help' act, from one survivor to another a positive value, let's say +75, so a serial killer could not go back so easily to look like a survivor to attack his preys.

So this is it. This is why, in my opinion, the a Humanity/Bandit system has to stay and needs to be improved. Let me know what are your thoughts about this.

[Dave Caffeine 17]

How about no.

The only reason I'm a bandit is 2 survivors tried to murder me for my ak when i was still a survivor. Needless to say they failed but the mod cant tell the difference between murder and self defense. Now everyone shoots at me, bandit and survivor alike without a second thought and more times than not scrubby ass survivors try to kill me and fail so my humanity goes down more.

The current system is broken and unrealistic, and I believe that is why it is being removed. I am glad its being changed and people like you no longer get to magically know the intentions of others just by looking at them.

This is a PVP zombie mod with incredible amounts of tension between players, this is one of the things that makes the mod so great.

[Kolchak (DayZ) 5]

The current system is broken and unrealistic' date=' and I believe that is why it is being removed. I am glad its being changed and people like you no longer get to magically know the intentions of others just by looking at them.

[/quote']

This made me chuckle. Only thing that changed is before you knew bandits would shoot you on sight, now you know everyone will shoot you on sight. From being "broken and unrealistic" to boring and predictable, great trade off.

[DarkMagik 0]

This is in the ALPHA stages for a reason. Alpha meaning that the devs want to try new ideas to see what people like and what they think will fit into the game/mod more properly. This doesn't mean that when they remove the bandit skins, that the current system is gone for good. It just means they are trying something new and might bring it back later on in the final stages.

[oktyabr 53]

I'm making this the official bandit discussion thread from this point on. All others will either be deleted or merged with this one.

[Knightmare (DayZ) 109]

This made me chuckle. Only thing that changed is before you knew bandits would shoot you on sight' date=' now you know everyone will shoot you on sight. From being "broken and unrealistic" to boring and predictable, great trade off.

[/quote']

Looting and choosing Your Skins > Bandit/Survivor only Skins.

(Though I'd much rather look like a bandit than a survivor, nice hat ***hole.)

The bandit system wasn't perfect. It had a purpose, but one I feel isn't in line with the game overall. And I swear, all these "bandit" horror stories take place.. where? The Coastal cities. Sigh.

Bandit skins are just so one dimensional. And heck, with earning humanity every five or so minutes, it isn't hard to kill survivors and stay one yourself. Especially if you're one-shot-killing them as the humanity penalty is based on number of times you hit them. (This is why newbie survivors who shoot someone several times with a makarov turn into bandits, even if it was self defense, where-as a survivor with a CZ can kill someone and stay a survivor.)

What do you do if you see a Bandit and Survivor joint group? Everyone kills people in the north. Not so much because of wanting to kill people, but out of staying alive, protecting your gear, etc. Trusting people can be tough, but workable, and either way if someone wants to shoot you they will. Their skin doesn't change the killing power of their bullets.

[Spedunkle 5]

I don't think the bandit skin should go. If you want to find friends, join the serve teamspeak. There are lots of them out there, and I've never went without a group to play with.

You can make some pretty consistent friends if you play while on teamspeak. If you don't have a mic, then you should get a $20.00 one from the store, cheap and worth it.

If you really want a new way to check and see if the person you now see (in the future, with no bandit skins) is a bandit, is to watch them and see what they do... just like you would in real life.

This game isn't about chatting in global. People who chat in global either don't have a mic, or really really really want to die. global chat makes it EASY to track where people are, where they are going, what they see, asking for "help", or tricking people on servers that have their nametags taken off.

Bandit skins need to go, in my own opinion, not because they are unrealistic (bandits would tend to have more 'loot' on them in the real world, thus you could tell somewhat who was a raider and who was a starving survivor) but because I like the idea of having more skins to choose from.

If you don't want to die, then don't go into the MAJOR PVP areas, I don't, and I live about 15 hours each time I play, and that's usually because after a while I tell my buddies to kill me and take my things so I can start over, cause' I had to go in some random location and didn't wanna run back.

[vladiman 25]

I think instead of punishing people for killing survivors you should reward people more for working together. By making other people useful to you besides as a bag of loot to steal than people might be more likely to not shoot on sight and maybe work together or something. Like have more things require more than one person, like more dangerous zombies or certain place that require another person to get to like high ledges or maintaining a base or something.

Also when better communication gets implemented, like direct chat only, people will be less likely to shoot on sight cause right now you gotta run away from them and type in "FRIENDLY?" in side chat and in the mean time they can just shoot you and some people don't even talk to you so you just shoot them.

[g2knee 1]

The bandit system is cool, they just have to fix self-defense kills. Everything else was fine.

In a "real" survival scenario, some people will help other people. Some people will get all militaristic, dress in camo to hide themselves, and prey on others to survive. Sure, there's lots more variation from that possible, but this was a good way to portray that choice in game.

If they remove it, hopefully they will put something better in place.

[slimlacy 19]

The humanity system is completely unrealistic as it is.

The name of the game is survival, if you trust blindly in a complete stranger, in game or real life, theres a very very high chance that it is going to end bad for you in the end.

Unfair for people who like to bandit, if they have a big ass target painted on them.

Don't like dying? Why don't you try some stealth, and instead of feasting on easy big city's for loot, stay on the move in the forrest.

Plenty of ways to avoid the bandits, one thing is team up with others. the bigger the group, the more noise you can make, since it is easier to defend yourselfs.

Another is simply avoid places with allot of people, if you like going around alone.

No need to paint targets on the people who exploit peoples mistakes.

If i want to join up with a surviver(s), i often stalk him/them for some time, and come in blazing when he/they end up getting zombie chased, way easier to avoid getting slaughtered if you earn peoples respect, instead of whining about other people mowing you down, and you need someone else to hold the gun for you while you cry...

I would rather team up with the guy who proved his worth to me, then someone who just don't like the big scary world alone.

people should not be punished for being... well people

It is a punishment enough that you most of the time will be alone, good gear doesn't match up to a group of people to help you.

And survivers have plenty of advantages, though people tend to throw them all away, by going alone into big cities, or other popular areas, to get some loot.

In the start i wasn't a bandit, but all the tears from people like you, was irresistible. Had to make more of those tears. Don't forget, this game is not meant for balance or holding your hand. Eighter suck it up, or the quit button isn't far away.

[Wolfskin75 1]

I agree I think they should stay. First, I dislike the bandit system to start out with. I don't think it help the game out at all. ( not that this is bandits fault) but I spend 10 minutes trying to log into a game, spawn Almost Immediately get gunned down.

I am threat to no one and resources even though seemily finite they are not at all.

So, since we are not talking about getting rid of the bandit system, then they should be marked forever.

[Jamesbiff 4]

Im a really new player of Dayz (I only have 18 hours played) and although I can't consider myself an expert on the mod' date=' I'm a veteran videogame player who has experienced the "Bandit" philosophy in several other online games (FPS, RTS, MMORPG, etc) People trying to make it difficult to other players have always existed and they will forever exist, in my opinion, due to the nature of human beings. Let me tell you first that I'm not complaining in this post. I have no problem with the Survivor/Bandit system as it is right now, and I even found some of the anecdotes below, fun and sometimes hilarious.

Now, let me tell you 3 short stoies about my interaction with Bandits, that makes me think the Bandit system has to stay, but needs some modifications to prevent players from abusing it.

Story 1: I'm cheking buildings in Cherno looking for the precious loot we all want, I leave a building and I stop in the middle of the street to check the place and to decide which way to go next. I hear shots, I get the blurry vision effect on my screen and I realize someone wants to kill me. I run and try to find a place to hide and I find a tower with 3 stories. I got up to the 3rd level and look for my agressor, I only have a handgun with me and when I finally see him I start shooting at him. He realizes that Im in the tower and get gets inside and shoots me with some rifle. I did not die immediately, and as I was on the ground bleeding, I could see the Bandit leaving the building. He did not take anything from me, he didn't even check my stuff. He just killed me because he could and I lost all of my progress (which wasn't much anyway, but I think you get my point).

Story 2: It's around 8 p.m. (in-game) and I'm in Elektro now, this was in a veteran server and as some of you know, player's names are not displayed when you are pointing at them at any time, so the chat was full of messages like 'The guy thowing flares in Kamehka, are you firendly?' 'Dude in the hospital in Cherno, friendly?', etcetrera.

So this 'new' guy enters the game and he starts writing in the chat how he just started the game and such, and he then starts the following conversation (note that I'm paraphrasing):

- 'New' guy: And why do I have this military uniform and scarf around my face?

- Some player 1: Well, that means you are a Bandit because you killed someone.

- 'New' guy: Oh alright. But I don't want to be a Bandit, how do I change my appearance back to normal?

- Some player 2: You have to help someone else, put a bandage or give a blood transfusion.

- 'New' guy: Oh, ok. So where are you now? Let me help you. I don't want to be a Bandit :(

After a few minutes looking for someone to 'help', he moves to Elektro and asks who is throwing flares. Well, thats was me so I reply in the chat, and I offer him to be my medic: I fight zombies and he can put bandages on me if I get hurt. So there he is standing in front of me with his 'accidental' Bandit skin, and he starts to shoot me. I run and hide behind a small house and try to escape (Im still not that good to aim and shoot on this game) I leave my cover to enter a big building and shoots at me again. I try to get to the upper levels of the building but I fall to the ground, wounded, and I look back to to try and do him some damage before I die. He attracted the nearby zombies while attacking me, and now he's been attacked by 4 or 5 zombies. He logs out and disappears from the game.

Story 3: I start a new game again in the same server where 'New Accidental Bandit' killed me, not really caring about what happened since it was a fairly new character, and as usual there is a lot of chatter about places, about players teaming up, about the game, etc. A grp of players decide to make a campsite, with a tent (or tents, don't remember well) and a campfire since it's getting cold and their temp is decreasing. People is joining the group and they talk about plans to join forces and explore cities, etc. I keep moving trying to find the nearest village to get some loot and to stop losing my temp. A few minutes later, the group of players in the campsite are not talking anymore, about 3 or 4 players stopped writing for a while, and when one of them seems to be back in the game and starts writing in the chat, a player send this message:

"Did you like my grenade over there at your campsite?"

This guy, reading the chat, approched the campsite and killed 3 or 4 players with a grenade, just for the fun of it.

So why exactly should the Bandit system stay? The stories you just read are the reason why. If there will be players like this in the game, there should be some in-game consecuence for the way they play the game and interact with others. It definitely is not fair to make someone who has killed 21 survivors, look like the rest of us. To trick and kill another players, ruining their games and get away with it only changing skins (if generic skins for everyone to get are implemented) and profile name. They need to know that following the Bandit way will make people recognize you and attack you on sight just as another zombie.

And this is also why the Humanity system has to change. The amount of negative points someone receives for killing another player should increase with the number of victims, so players defending themselves would not be badly affected by this system, guving them an oportunity to recover those points with a few good deeds, but for those accumulating certain number of murders, the Bandit skin or skins and status should appear, and the way to lose it should be harder for them.

It could be more or less like this (example) :

1st survivor kill: -100 humanity

2nd survivor kill: -300 ...

3rd survivor kill: -500 ...

4th survivor kill: -700 ...

5th survivor kill: -1500 ...

6th survivor kill: -3000 --> Bandit skin

Please note this is an example, the system and the requirements could be different, but you can see how with a system like this, accidentally killing another survivor or defending themselves, would not have big consequences for innocent survivors and would make survivor killers more notorious giving them a Bandit skin. To avoid the abuse of this system, give every 'help' act, from one survivor to another a positive value, let's say +75, so a serial killer could not go back so easily to look like a survivor to attack his preys.

So this is it. This is why, in my opinion, the a Humanity/Bandit system has to stay and needs to be improved. Let me know what are your thoughts about this.

[/quote']

The bandit system was completely broken, what you were given was the illusion of safety, not actual safety. The skin did not reflect a player's intentions. Having played since the start of the mod ive made a couple of observations;

1) Youre MUCH more likely to be killed by a survivor. (only been killed by a couple of bandits, 90% of my deaths came from survivors before i became a bandit)

2) Due to the nature of the game, a player with a bandit skin is more likely to be an older player, someone who's been playing for a while and has had to defend themselves, rather than simply a player killing asshole.

In fact, as a bandit, ive helped more players than ive killed, obviously not face to face because the stupid system makes them think im just going to murder them. But ive sat in the tree line many times, picking off pursuing zombies and/or players.

The system is broken, good riddance.

[reuter 120]

The name of the game is survival' date=' if you trust blindly in a complete stranger, in game or real life, theres a very very high chance that it is going to end bad for you in the end.

[/quote']

Oh hi. It's the "realism" bandwaggon again. And still, It's totally useless when talking about a video game, where pulling a trigger is a rather easy task considering that only a mouseclick is required.

Think about this: In all catastrophies humanity encountered during history the majority of people didn't turn into mass murderers. Especially not just "for the lulz". Yet in video games they do, because there's nothing emotional about it. Fearing the consequences of having just ONE single life changes literally everything. But instead people tend to behave like dicks over the Internet.

[Otleaz 3]

If I was looting cherno, I would make damn well sure that if I see someone else, they die. It isn't like he was just going to let you see him and hope you don't attack him. It is much safer to kill you, loot, and get out of there.

Also, you got tricked by an idiot who gave himself away. He claimed to be new to the game, but at the same time found it peculiar that his character had a bandit skin, after describing it in a way that made it seem like he didn't know what bandits were.

[Wolfskin75 1]

I don't it adds anything to the game as far as playing it. I understand that this will prob never go away. I do think that as soon as I get a handle on the game it won't be as big of a issue as it is currently learning the game.