PVPer's vs PVEer's how to keep the game fun and please both, and ideas on skins.

[davidcastle 19]

What I have found, and this is not only in games but in real life also, is that anytime you force a person to do something it stops becoming fun. There are many games that have done this and I really don't play them anymore.

What we have here is a real sandbox game. As such you allow the players to create their own community and story and their own rules. All the dev provides us is the world we are in.

Let's think about some things logically before we approach this "compromise" situation.

- Dayz without PVP would not be a full experience.

(think about it, would it be? you would just climb a roof shoot a lee and pop all the zeds in the head as they come. I love the zombie system in this game but it is not built like L4D for pure Player vs Zombie co-op only. There is survival, but really with only zeds threatening you even on expert servers with the amount of zeds in the 1.5.7 patch it was still super easy to be a zed killing machine)

- Dayz the with the bandit survivor skins = bandits shot on sight by survivors and other bandits

(self explanatory. people know you've killed not only bandits but pure innocents)

- Dayz with the new patch where people can no longer turn bandits still has survivors shooting survivors

(no one is to be trusted. no matter how much you like someone, if they have an allice or an AKM, your head shotting them the first chance you get because you want it.)

What can be concluded from the above are 2 things. 1) dayz NEEDS players killing other players. It adds that extra tension and paranoia that can't be provided by strolling brainzed AI's. 2) Players don't trust anything they are not currently on skype/TS with.

So what do we do?

Here is how my father raised me for 21 to deal with situations like this (make fun of me if you want... i'll just kill your dad). You do not punish people who do wrong, rather you reward those who do right and provide a lack of a reward to those who don't.

There is one grand example of this in the game so far though it is far from being able to provide this building block for cooperative play right now... Blood Bags. A blood bag forces one to use his social skills (which believe it or not are an important skill in an anarchaic zombie apocalypse.) to communicate with another player to use it properly. The problem is there is no reward for the other player. I do not believe even when humanity was part of the game was there a humanity boost.

I do not want to talk about how to change the blood bag system, I just wanted to bring to attention it's impact on the game currently as we explore other ways to facilitate coop survival.

What I think would work partially is the new skins coupled with bringing humanity back. Maybe you find skins in the world BUT they have limitations to be worn that must be met. Also bonus's of wearing them might be cool Some examples are..

- Must have X amount positive humanity. (x amount overall to unlock and x amount in life to use) This way you KNOW these players are trust worthy because to shoot an innocent would mean they have a chance to lose the right to wear their "sherrif" skin. This would provide the inherent ability of trust. Maybe also if you scroll over a player you can see if they recently murdered someone or shot bandits ECT.

- Must have X amount negative humanity. (same as above to unlock and use) YOU KNOW TO SHOOT ON SITE OR EVEN HUNT NO MATTER WHAT. Maybe the advantage is just social? your a badass among your friends or bandits. OR another idea is better camo. (though on servers with nametags this would be hard..) something that does not give an outrageous advantage but keeps baddies wearing them. Maybe you can tell who the Sherrifs on the server are and what their names are(not locations though)

- Must have X amount of blood transfusions to others (x amount overall to unlock) (maybe in a single life or over within a certain amount of recent time let's not look at HOW now, rather lets look at the idea) You would be able to tell those who are Medics or provide care to others (DR. MD Wasteland for example... very good guy, look him up) Maybe provides you with faster use of medical supplies so that using bandages, morphine, and bloodbags are instant like painkillers.

- Must have survived X amount of time on life(i would say rather than X amount overall, you have to have a single character that has survived past 15 hours or something big to unlock) (maybe provides you with an increased resistance to hunger thirst and temp)

- Must have looted X amount of items (loot x amount on one character to unlock) (maybe makes you less seen by zeds lowering the eyeball by 1 bar so that you can keep up your looting spree)

- Must have hunted X amount of animals on one char to unlock. After this maybe you have to ability to track animals. Maybe you can scroll wheel and choose track then it shows how many within 300m (or whatever is fair) distance from you.

- Must have traveled X amount in one life to unlock. Either a 10% speed increase or something that won't give unfair advantage in combat, but save travel time slightly.

- X amount of time at night survived on one char.... yes we know people server hop to day, so reward those who play the HARDCORE dayz. Maybe the advantage is you are able to travel more quitely at night lowering sound by 1 at night. (maybe 2 or 1 on sound and sight since this is a night only thing)

- X amount of zed kills on one life. cool ass zed killing skin, that maybe once every 60 (or whatever is fair time) minutes can negate the first bad effect a zed does by hitting you.. IE broken legs, bleeding, unconcious ect...

-X amount of bandits killed in one life. Cool ass bounty hunter skin that provides you with greatly increased humanity when killing bandits.

- X amount survivors killed in one life. Cool ass murderer skin that negates humanity increase while worn.

Also maybe some skins that must be "found" as rare spawns such as.

- Ghilli skin. You move faster while prone.

- Camo paint skin. 1 less sight

- Radiation skin (or something cooler sounding) you slowly (and i mean slowly) regen health over time.

- Jacket skin. You have GREAT resistence to temp

- Mechanic skin. You do not need toolbox to do things that require one.

- Woodsman. You do not need compass to tell direction.

- Cartographer. You can instantly tell the location you are at (like the words that appear at the bottom right when you spawn) Also you do not need GPS to tell where you are on map.

- Swat Uniform. Slower movement by 10% but you take 10% less damage (or whatever amounts are fair... does not need to be proportional amounts.

- Scout uniform. Faster movement (faster than the one for distance traveled) but you take increased damage.

- Swimmers suit. You don't lose stuff when swimming, you also swim with greatly increased speed.

- Hiker. You can somehow open another bag with 6 (or whatever is fair) extra slots.

- Wildman. You can leave a mark on the ground (pile of stones?) or a mark on a tree and anyone who scroll wheels next to it has an option to set it as a waypoint in 3d spot.. like in arma 2 where you have a waypoint and it shows distance away from it. This stays for you and all others players through respawns as long as you are on that server and you have not died.

These are just some ideas. What do you guys think? I believe that some of these skins would provide incentive for people to play as a team. For example those who wanted to survive together would wear certain skins. Maybe even also instead of unlocking the skin for your account, you must ALSO have a requirement to wear it on your current life. So for example say you unlock the bandits killed skin at 30 bandits on one life. To wear it on any other life, you still need 5 bandits killed. Or say on the Positive humanity, you need to reach 25,000 humanity on one life, but to wear it on any other life you need to still be above 10,000 humanity.

These skins would also add some extra fun persitence that isn't game breaking (since you have to reach a certain point in your certain life to equip.. also with the exception of the speed boost ones, none help in combat too much. and even the speed boost ones are minor or even with deficits).

Also you would be able to tell fresh spawns or apart from longer living characters and thus be able to sort of determine what risks the person is willing to take when you start to interact with them. Also the advantages provided by "evil" skins keeps people wearing them while still protecting the innocents. To stop people from skin switching on the fly, maybe put a cooldown of a few hours on skin switches.