The murderer problem

[malau 11]

Now that it has been announced that the game will become standalone, something HAS to be done to solve the problem of players who shoot other players.

There comes a point - usually when you have managed to find good weapons yourself - when you are needlessly murdered by a dickhead and you lose the lot, that you think to yourself "What is the point of playing this ? There's no purpose to this game. I have to start all over again with nothing !".

As a standalone, I wouldn't spend money on something that has no point and has no long term gameplay.

Also. as a standalone game, DayZ stands to be murdered by WarZ - which REWARDS PLAYERS WITH XP TO LEVEL UP, and has real trading etc. DayZ has NOTHING.

To fix the murderer problem which is killing the MOD, I suggest.....

* If you murder a player then Zombies will become x percent more able to seek you out.

AND/OR

* When you murder a player, the FADE aiming feature will kick in making it EXTREMELY DIFFICULT for the murderer to aim his/her weapon for x minutes.

* Make it impossible for a player to shoot his/her weapon at another player WHOSE WEAPON IS LOWERED.

OF COURSE, WE ALSO NEED A LEVELLING SYSTEM WITH XP - SOMETHING TO CREATE A PURPOSE AND A REASON TO KEEP COMING BACK.

Edited August 8, 2012 by vecuccio

[rickhunter5301 11]

Edit 2x: Murder is part of the game and a valid way to play. We may not like it but there is nothing wrong with murdering.

Edited August 8, 2012 by rickhunter

[Wells 1]

Well for one this mod isn't really a MMO. So don't expect safe zones, or a actual trading system. ITS A ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GAME, its about how you play that depends how long you live, you have to SURVIVE, if you decide to take a chance to trade something, and its goes completly wrong, LEARN FROM YOU MISTAKE. And this mod doesn't need a leveling system, it would just change it into something it is not, and I think he said once in his interview that he would make it for free if it were a standalone game.

[koze 113]

• Punishing people for banditry is wrong, and Dean said so himself in a rezzed session
  
• This is not Cod or Battlefield, whats the point of earning xp in a zombie apocalypse?
  

[Kellexx 4]

Sandbox games don't need a purpose. Like Minecraft. There is no purpose or objective. You just do what you want to do.

None of these ideas would work. Being unable to shoot another player is easily exploitable and punishing anyone for murdering doesn't help anyone who kills in self-defense.

[Dev (DayZ) 113]

Your failure to maintain situational awareness has nothing to do with the mod.

We do not need experience, levels, or skills to play this game. The population has grown considerably without any of those and will continue to do so.

Clearly this game is not for you. You might find something more suitable to your skill level on the wii.

[SalamanderAnder (DayZ) 1747]

This game is skill based and as such XP is NOT a requirement. Investment, practice, situational awareness, and common sense is what makes you good. Murder should never be impossible, out of principle. Restricting free will is not the way to balance motivations. While I do agree that PvP is rampant and the game needs tweaking to encourage more player interaction, restriction and punishment is not the way.

[robert_achleitner@chello.at 9]

Also. as a standalone game, DayZ stands to be murdered by WarZ - which REWARDS PLAYERS WITH XP TO LEVEL UP, and has real trading etc. DayZ has NOTHING.

So far WarZ has nothing done but collecting email adresses of people. No game play video.... just screenshots.... and those look pretty much like DayZ but a better version. If WarZ really exist, i doubt they could release within the next few months. I personally think it is some publicity for the standalone of DayZ, since it looks like it is the same system (also clothes of the survivers) but with a better (Arma 3) engine. If that is the case, than rocket and his team would have done a very very good job there! Which in the end raises interest and thus money for the genre itself!

To fix the murderer problem which is killing the MOD, I suggest.....

Hacking is currently killing the mod, not the player killing. But this is the responsibility of the Arma 2 devs and not the DayZ team.

The player killing is what it even keeps it alive for late game. This is MOD and thus is limited. For the way it is, it is great. But the fun of it is to start with nothing and slowly gear up. Once you are geared up what do you want to do? Sit in the woods next to a pond where you can refill your waterbottle? Waiting for prey to gut and cook?

The only thing that is left you can do, is fighting other highly equiped players...actually play groups. Once you played more you will realize that.

As I started I also would not want to murder other players and I still saw many players behaving the same. But with people knowing the game better, this mentality vanishes. Most people and especially clan members have a group to play with already. They dont need new 'friends'. If you die then and need to regear and meet up with your group it is usually easier and safer to kill the other players on the way than to let them be. If you let them be they might take stuff that you need too, or even grab first a better weapon and kill you.

Late game, most players got some kind of a sniper rifle. They can oneshot others pretty fast, but also know they can be killed pretty fast. Thus everyone prefers to kill and live over let live and die.

Again, this is a MOD. See it more as a testing area for the Dev Team for the standalone version. If the standalone version is going to be an MMO, I am sure there will be more typical MMO elements than you can see here in DayZ and I am sure they will find a way to make people work together more in general. I am hoping for some kind of zombie flooding events, where you will more players to defend, than any clan usually holds :)

Just keep playing the game... Try to get some friends you can trust, and see other players far away from the starting areas as bandits. And as someone else wrote, learn how to survive... the longer you play the game, the more you know how.

cheers

[debiru 27]

There comes a point - usually when you have managed to find good weapons yourself - when you are needlessly murdered by a dickhead and you lose the lot, that you think to yourself "What is the point of playing this ? There's no purpose to this game. I have to start all over again with nothing !".

the purpose is to stay alive as long as possible

don't get attached to the loot, your life is the only thing that matters.. do whatever you have to do to stay alive

XP will not keep you play longer, you reach the cap and get bored

loot wont keep you play longer, you get the legendary weapon and that's it, you get bored, or you start asking for new epic loot..

the fact that there are players killing you on sight makes it harder to stay alive and that's what makes it exciting, when you stay alive for a week you feel you accomplished something

and because it is a sandbox you can do whatever you want and keep yourself entertained..

make friends, build a base, players take roles, someone is a hunter who will supply the base with fresh meat, some will be scavenging for medicine/weapons/ammunition/whatever, some will be doctors, some will guard the base, some will repair stuff, someone will make a radio station and keep everybody entertained... be creative, thats what all this is about

we do not need skill trees, xp, talents.. if you want to be a doctor, get a bag full of medicine supplies and act like a doctor..

all we need is a world full of things you can interact with and the tools to do so, the rest is up to us..

[robciviccrx 28]

Player killing is the most exciting thing in DayZ, also being shot at and killed can be fun or at least get your adrenaline going. How many games actually give you that feeling when you spot someone. I only get those feelings because there are no levels, no xp, no retarded cant shoot players balancing. Your survivor needs to have the threat of being wiped of gear and dumped back on the coast at any moment or its just not the same.

[Mos1ey 6301]

From a non-shoot in sight player...

Player killing is part of the game. There is nothing wrong with banditry (killing a player to steal their loot or any other way in which it may benefit you e.g. Clearing the area so that any nearby loot is yours). There is a problem with DayZ though, and it's griefing. Those guys that sit on the hills, sniping people for no reason other than to kill people and add +1 murder so they can tell their prepubescent friends how 1337 they are. That has to stop. It's killing the game.

[Nataniel 0]

There's no problem with killing, but somehow there should be easier way to identify the killer and then try to hunt him down. XXXX killed YYY would help.

[vbgbasse 5]

i dont think that the killing is wrong in the game. but the problem in the game is when you are fully geared, whatnow? i play the game as surivor. havn´t killed a single player yet, have been alive 23 days now and together with 2 friends we got 1bus, 1 truck, 3 cars and 1 motorcycle. oh, did i meantion that we got 15 nvg´s too? what im trying to say is; when your goal of surviving is done, your only really challenge is to kill other players like the mod is now. I think that the game need some reward to coop with other players. ex:it could be help from other players to defeat other zombies, with other words harder zombies because you dont need help for the moment.

[-+BoSS+-Eran Mintor 5]

I think you want to play WarZ more than DayZ so stop trying to make DayZ the way it wasn't intended to be.

Bandits shouldn't be punished beyond the fact they have very few friends and risk revealing their position whenever they fire at other players. Other than that, punishing bandits doesn't make sense with aim reduction or any of this bull as it is no longer realistic. Trading with money makes no sense because this is Post-Apocalypse and there are no world economies that matter anymore. The only thing that's worth trading is foods, ammunition, and weapons/survival gear. (Oh and these items are why there are so many bandits. I know some people think a Zombie Post-Apocalypse would mean every able human would work together but if I'm hungry and you're making me go fight some zombies to share your food....I'm sorry dude, I'm just gonna kill you).

"Leveling" is not a good idea in my opinion; this is not Diablo or some other RPG with things like "STR(ength)", "END(urance)", and so on. I think it might be cool if you let players choose some certain strong characteristics that never improve over time but can only decrease if not kept healthy. For example, when you start a fresh spawn you can choose "male" or "female" but what if you could choose a few basic things like if you want better accuracy or speed or endurance or health, and you would never "level up" or improve those characteristics but you would be strong in those points until you started to starve/dehydrate, and you'd slowly lose those characteristics as you became a weakling from poor nutrition/sleep?

The reason I don't really like leveling up is because it's going to create too much of an entry barrier and the older players who stay alive the longest will just dominate everyone because they will have 3x the health or whatever ridiculousness. There needs to be a small range of differences if such skilling was implemented because it doesn't make sense to have certain "older" characters overpower others so much. If anything, older characters should be weaker cuz of the fact they're a 60 year-old decrepit man.

Just my 2 cents.

Edited August 8, 2012 by -+BoSS+-Eran Mintor

[Mos1ey 6301]

There's no problem with killing, but somehow there should be easier way to identify the killer and then try to hunt him down. XXXX killed YYY would help.

I dunno, I just feel that senseless killing is so unrealistic that it really takes away from the realism aspect of the game. I don't care what any of the wannabe post-apocolypse John Gottis say, they would not just kill people for no apparent reason in real life... Maybe you'd get the 1/1,000,000 psycho but it's literally 1/10 in every server, lol. It's so hard to come up with a mechanic that could separate legitimate banditry and grief/pointless kills though... I kind of wish they'd just remove sniper rifles all together, they hurt the game more than they add to it.

[socom77 36]

the only thing i would add out of what you've said is a trading system. punishing people for playing the game is dumb and always will be.

[-+BoSS+-Eran Mintor 5]

I think as far as trading and the economy, there should be few/no mechanics for it but instead let it be player driven. As far as I know, Rocket agrees on this. Many people may not know but there is already one group of traders (Freeside Trading Co.) and there could be many others if people are serious about it. The one advantage "Survivors" have over "Bandits" is that they are more likely to be trustworthy people and willing to get along. Bandits are competing with each other, but Survivors have the ability to trade and create small cities if they really put their minds to it.

[vbgbasse 5]

to punish a player that playes like a bandit is not the way i would choose cause that would take the "soul" from dayz. more like encourage players to cooperate and not killing eachother.

[Bludy 324]

i usually don't hate, but this thread has bad suggestions and is the 928459259027502 time i see one: then go play warz if you don't like one of the biggest parts of this mod

[vbgbasse 5]

i usually don't hate, but this thread has bad suggestions and is the 928459259027502 time i see one: then go play warz if you don't like one of the biggest parts of this mod

i dont want to make you angry. just a question. what is the biggest part of this mod?

Edited August 8, 2012 by vbgbasse

[-+BoSS+-Eran Mintor 5]

i dont want to make you angry. just a question. what is the biggest part of this mod?

My dick of course...

Sorry you left it open...it was too tempting....I'm ashamed but it was impossible to resist...

Edited August 8, 2012 by -+BoSS+-Eran Mintor

[vbgbasse 5]

haha ^^

[Mos1ey 6301]

I'll answer for him - 'player killing is the bigget part of this mod'.

...And he's wrong. Shock horror - the game is actually about survival. Not screwing over freshly spawned players.

I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of encouraging co-op instead of discouraging grief kills, but then you just hit the exact same problem... How do you do that? The aim would be to encourage people to help RANDOMS, not just their friends, and it would have to be implemented in a way that wouldn't allow a player to have their friends act as randoms in order to gain said benefit of co-op play.

[-+BoSS+-Eran Mintor 5]

You're kinda stepping out of line talking for someone else.

I think you might just be a little upset with all the PVP you've tried to avoid but failed to lately. People play this game for different reasons and that's one of the things that make it great. I play it for the survival, tension, and the PVP. However, others play to be traders, medics, radio hosts, and so on and I feel that is really awesome. You shouldn't feel like one persons style of play is "wrong" or it shouldn't be allowed because that would take so much away from the game if we started to become limited in gameplay options.

You can encourage Co-Op. Start something like the Freeside Trading Co. or something else. Use your head. I feel like most the people who are complaining about the PVP aren't using their heads. Don't put yourself at an obvious disadvantage in which someone can dominate you without fearing for their own lives. Use ransoms/hostages/rewards and those sort of things to ensure you don't die to someone who really wants to kill you. And trust me, when there is no law, there are a lot of people who don't give a fuck and will kill you at the first opportunity even if you think they're a friend, if not only for the reason that they're afraid you'll kill them first.

Edited August 8, 2012 by -+BoSS+-Eran Mintor

[vbgbasse 5]

punish bandits will take the soul from this mod. now, the only way i see that this game could give the survivor a boost forward would be a harder environment so you could use the coop to survive. And those how wanna play like bandits could continue do that. i mean that a change in the game wouldnt nessisery destroy the game for the bandits, only change it for the survivors. everyone gets happy =)