Murder by Numbers

[tails13 0]

Disclaimer: I support the removal of bandit skins. I'm also not a PKer for the sake of it. I avoid other players as much as possible.

Out of curiosity to the influence this change will make, let's compare the number of bandits to total alive players as a percentage. I feel this will be more accurate than people just saying "I'm getting killed heaps more now! yada yada".

I figured the bandits stat would give a good indication of those that are player killing, I'm also keep an eye on murders per player as a comparison stat. If both of these stats increase it can probably be assumed that player killing is increasing.

This also falls in line with rocket's vision of this being an experiment. For something to be an experiment we have to measure the results, right?

Today, the 28/05 at 9:58am Australian CST the figures stand at 12004 bandits out of 99558 alive players. ie. 12.05%.

I'll update this thread on a day to day basis (sometimes a couple times a day) until I get bored.

Bandits versus Total Alive running tally:

28/5, 9:58am ACST: 12.05%

28/5, 11:03am ACST: 12.18%

28/5, 12:42pm ACST: 12.21%

28/5, 10:44pm ACST: 12.68%

29/5, 9:19am ACST: 13.47%

29/5, 9:53pm ACST: 13.80%

Murders per player alive running tally (Murders per player, ie. MpP):

28/5, 11:13am ACST: 2.13 MpP

28/5, 10:44pm ACST: 2.18 MpP

29/5, 9:19am ACST: 2.23 MpP

[tails13 0]

Updated percentage tally. 28/5 11am ACST.

[maxipower 1]

whats intresting is before the removable of skins murders only just doubled bandit kills showing that even tho survivors are easier to kill, the ratio wasnt that much higher.

thats gonna go to shit now..... and I love it.

[tails13 0]

Well we can also look at straight up murders versus alive players as a percentage as well.

Currently there are 2.13 murders for every player alive. I'll add that to the original post.

[tails13 0]

*updated original post*

[Deneme 8]

All I am going to say is, with no bandit skin I am highly more likely to shoot any player I come across on general premise that I do not know them and unsure if they will shoot me before I shoot them.

I can see the player killings happening a lot more often from this reason alone now.

[Sveglia 2]

And that's just sad. Enjoy the mindless PvP.

[WellenB 1]

I like this thread. It's going to be very interesting indeed to see those numbers develop.

[tails13 0]

*original post updated*

[linfosoma 38]

In my own personal experience, now that I dont have a bandit skin anymore I've taken this as a second chance.

Before even if I wanted to help someone I couldn't because my skin would mislead people, I had no choice, but now Im trying to be a survivor and help others whenever I can.

Removing bandit skins means you cant tell who is who, yes, but it also means that us bandits are no longer forced to play one way because of the skin we are using.

[callahan9119 7]

In my own personal experience' date=' now that I dont have a bandit skin anymore I've taken this as a second chance.

Before even if I wanted to help someone I couldn't because my skin would mislead people, I had no choice, but now Im trying to be a survivor and help others whenever I can.

Removing bandit skins means you cant tell who is who, yes, but it also means that us bandits are no longer forced to play one way because of the skin we are using.

[/quote']

The mechanic should have been improved, not removed. Yeah, it should eventually wear off more easily for gameplay purposes, and just defending yourself shouldn't have caused it. It should be mostly for recidivist psychopathic murderers. A gradual scale would have been better.

[reasand83@gmail.com 2]

In my own personal experience' date=' now that I dont have a bandit skin anymore I've taken this as a second chance.

Before even if I wanted to help someone I couldn't because my skin would mislead people, I had no choice, but now Im trying to be a survivor and help others whenever I can.

Removing bandit skins means you cant tell who is who, yes, but it also means that us bandits are no longer forced to play one way because of the skin we are using.

[/quote']

The mechanic should have been improved, not removed. Yeah, it should eventually wear off more easily for gameplay purposes, and just defending yourself shouldn't have caused it. It should be mostly for recidivist psychopathic murderers. A gradual scale would have been better.

I think he removed it just to see what would happen. In game that is, not the constant stream of forum threads whining about it.

[DudelyPowers 0]

A gradual scale would have been better.

0% bandit: Default survivor skin

25% bandit: Default survivor skin' date=' but baseball cap is worn backwards

50% bandit: Backwards cap, saggy jeans

75% bandit: Shirt and vest are replaced by a hoodie

100% bandit:

[img']http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f31/SlowShootinPete/ali-g.jpg

[rebb 13]

This thread is a nice idea, please keep it updated, even if only once per day or something like that.

[Hawk24 94]

So banditry has shown an increase of 0.6% so far

Oh my....this update brought anarchy upon Chernarus....

[tails13 0]

*Original post updated*

Note the almost 1.5% increase in under 24 hours between the 28th and 29th of May.

[grambo (DayZ) 0]

While some people may have liked the effect that bandit skins had, I personally just don't like the mechanic.

If you want to discourage player kills and encourage teamwork, there are better ways to do it. Here are a few ideas I had:

-Make healing items more effective when someone else uses them on you. For example, bandaging yourself would require two bandages, but bandaging someone else would achieve the same effect with one bandage. Right now blood bags do a great job of this, but I rarely see them.

-Introduce long-term incapacitation (2-3 minutes, maybe) that can only be sped up by a teammate reviving you. In a 1v1 fight, being knocked down would result in bleeding out or the other guy coming and finishing you off. But if you have teammates, they can pick you up and patch you up. Epi-pens might have to be made more common for this to work.

-Make nametags visible at short ranges on Veteran/Expert difficulties. Being a team is even harder when you can't identify your friends, even up close. Add this to the fact that with ingame voip, you can't ask if a person you see is your friend or a new bandit, because the enemy will hear you. I'm not sure how possible this is, though.

Stuff like that. Bandit skins basically draw a big "EVIL" icon on somebody, regardless of whether they deserved it. Personally, I got my bandit skin the first day I played DayZ - two survivors attacked me on the beach without hitting me, so killing them didn't count as self defense. After that it was almost impossible to team up with anybody because I was a "bad guy", so after a few days I just started killing everyone and taking their stuff.

[noxiousg 5]

So banditry has shown an increase of 0.6% so far

Oh my....this update brought anarchy upon Chernarus....

The total tallies include characters that are not necessarily active, so the percent change doesn't paint a very good picture.

A more interesting metric is the rate of increase in survivors versus the rate of increase in bandits. Assuming that the change in mechanics had no influence on the frequency of player kills, we would expect to see these rates of change roughly equal one another.

The number of survivors has risen from 99,558 to 104,463. This is an increase of 4,905 or 4.9%.

The number of bandits has risen from 12,004 to 14079. This is an increase of 2,075 or 17.3%.

This difference is marked. We'll certainly need more data to confidently draw a conclusion, but the trend appears to be a significant increase in player killing thus far.

[Virfortis 111]

We should probably cut the number of alive players down too, in order to factor people who have left.

[tails13 0]

So banditry has shown an increase of 0.6% so far

Oh my....this update brought anarchy upon Chernarus....

The total tallies include characters that are not necessarily active' date=' so the percent change doesn't paint a very good picture.

A more interesting metric is the rate of increase in survivors versus the rate of increase in bandits. Assuming that the change in mechanics had no influence on the frequency of player kills, we would expect to see these rates of change roughly equal one another.

The number of survivors has risen from 99,558 to 104,463. This is an increase of 4,905 or 4.9%.

The number of bandits has risen from 12,004 to 14079. This is an increase of 2,075 or 17.3%.

This difference is marked. We'll certainly need more data to confidently draw a conclusion, but the trend appears to be a significant increase in player killing thus far.

[/quote']

Nice observation, I didn't think to compare those stats.

I roughly remember that a week or two ago the bandit to total alive players was under 10%.

I expect that the bandit level will get to around 25 - 30% and then maybe plateau. At this rate of over 1% a day, we'll see that kind of level in under two weeks.

When rocket eventually develops a more practical use for the humanity system that he's spoken about it'll be interesting to see the influence it makes on bandit numbers.

We should probably cut the number of alive players down too' date=' in order to factor people who have left.

[/quote']

That shouldn't matter as the total alive player stat includes bandits anyway. So player loss should affect bandits and survivors at around the same level.

[Guest ragequitalready]

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Edited October 25, 2012 by ragequitalready

[mattressi 3]

An increased number of bandits/murderers may not always be simply due to everyone suddenly becoming a douche now that bandit skins are gone. For example, I've now become a murderer without even meaning to. Previously, I would shoot at most bandits (unless they actually were friendly) and would avoid shooting survivors at all costs, unless I had to shoot them to save myself. I would often shoot bandits who were attacking others, but I would rarely do the same to survivors for fear of becoming a bandit. This ensured that I remained a survivor.

Now, I've become a bandit because I've defended others from, what seems to be, bandits. They attack people right in front of my eyes, often for no reason (though, sometimes they might actually loot the body of the person they shot), so I shoot them. I have no way of knowing if the game classes them as a murderer/bandit, so it's only after they've died that I'm told whether I'm apparently a horrible person or a hero.

This is a stupid mechanic. Either remove bandit skins and remove humanity or keep humanity and keep bandit skins. Right now, humanity is solely based on whether you shoot people or not. If I play a pacifist, I'll have normal humanity, if I defend people, I will have negative humanity. "Murdering" (if shooting someone who attacked someone for no reason can be called that) someone reduces your humanity significantly more than killing bandits, so even if every 3 out of 4 people I see attack someone are bandits (rather than a newbie who goes on a killing spree), I still become a murderer overall for defending people.

[The Killing Joke 43]

All I am going to say is' date=' with no bandit skin I am highly more likely to shoot any player I come across on general premise that I do not know them and unsure if they will shoot me before I shoot them. I can see the player killings happening a lot more often from this reason alone now.[/quote']

So, you're saying you - and players like you - are to blame? It's good to put a name to the face that is going to ruin the experience for everybody. Thanks.

[SpaceMonkey 2]

I agree with Doktor, this data is going to be really hard to interpret without controlling a few things better. An effect of population size is almost granted, as it increases density which in turn increases the probability of players encounters and therefore the raw number of murders (assuming that the probability to murder/encounter stays constant). Since we know that the players population has recently been increasing sharply, this is an issue in your stats.

[Satire (DayZ) 23]

This is a stupid mechanic. Either remove bandit skins and remove humanity or keep humanity and keep bandit skins. Right now' date=' humanity is solely based on whether you shoot people or not. If I play a pacifist, I'll have normal humanity, if I defend people, I will have negative humanity. "Murdering" (if shooting someone who attacked someone for no reason can be called that) someone reduces your humanity significantly more than killing bandits, so even if every 3 out of 4 people I see attack someone are bandits (rather than a newbie who goes on a killing spree), I still become a murderer overall for defending people.

[/quote']

It's true.

Rocket does say that the community should find solutions to its own problems but if one is going to be punished for white-knighting...