Self-Defense Radius

[The Power Nap 21]

A possible solution to people defending themselves getting negative humanity would be to implement a bounding volume around all the players. If another player shooting into your avatar's bounding volume you can retaliate against them with no humanity penalty.

EDIT

This could be achieved by associating a flag with each player called 'aggressive'. If you shoot at another player's bounding volume and their aggressive flag is set to false, yours gets set to true for a period of time.

This could be played out in different forms. If you shoot at a bandit who hasn't been aggressive for a period of time, you could get marked as aggressive. There could be an exception that if the player you're shooting at has low humanity, your flag doesn't get set. I can see arguments for both.

The penalty in humanity could be half to nil for shooting an aggressive player. Having some reduced humanity penalty makes sense in the fact that people who continually put themselves in these situations might be trying to exploit/grief, thus some accumulative effect.

Edited August 15, 2012 by The Power Nap

[spinager 152]

Been proposed. We'll see if they ever implement something in the mod or standalone. But It would be nice.

[Knollte 13]

Would be nice if such a thing can be implemented.

[The Power Nap 21]

Been proposed. We'll see if they ever implement something in the mod or standalone. But It would be nice.

I searched a bit for it, can you provide a link?

[wtfosaurus 30]

Would be nice if they could implement this into the game, although what if it is a friend and you are just being careless? that should affect your humanity as well...

[enforcer1975 1111]

This area has to be about the size of the farthest reaching weapon...doesn't make sense.

Better thing would be add a script that identifies if someone has a weapon and has shot recently and if you are in range of his weapon. You could even check if he was facing you when he shot.

Rocket should be able to script that in his sleep.

Edited August 15, 2012 by Enforcer

[xximrtwoixx 104]

Won't have an effect on people trolling without shooting, like drawing Z's to you, following you, trying to steal your stuff, or other aggressive actions.

There is no way to create a system complex enough to track and confirm "humanity" and hostility. All counters are arbitrary and all player interactions are dynamic. IMO this means it's all wasted resources and DEV time.

[The Power Nap 21]

This area has to be about the size of the farthest reaching weapon...doesn't make sense.

Better thing would be add a script that identifies if someone has a weapon and has shot recently and if you are in range of his weapon. You could even check if he was facing you when he shot.

Rocket should be able to script that in his sleep.

Game engines have coarse and fine grained collision detection with all of their objects, It would be easy to set this bounding volume to a coarse grained collision volume farther up the collision chain. The only obstacle would be if the engine allowed scripts access to these volumes. i.e. ArmA is already doing these calculations, let's try and leverage them a bit more.

Won't have an effect on people trolling without shooting, like drawing Z's to you, following you, trying to steal your stuff, or other aggressive actions.

There is no way to create a system complex enough to track and confirm "humanity" and hostility. All counters are arbitrary and all player interactions are dynamic. IMO this means it's all wasted resources and DEV time.

Nothing will be perfect, but you can make improvements.

Edited August 15, 2012 by The Power Nap

[nev2k 16]

Well i think, that you if you shoot a player who isn't a bandit so far, is your own problem. If you really go for helping other survivors then you usually have base humanity, allowing you to defend yourself.

The problem is of course that sometime people are "survivors" but playing bandit and just helped out their friends with a bloodbag or something like that, but that could be fixed, by reducing the humanity you get from helping somebody with the time you helped that specific person, so if a bandit helped his friend bandit the 10th time he only get 5instead of a 1000 humanity points.

[The Power Nap 21]

Well i think, that you if you shoot a player who isn't a bandit so far, is your own problem. If you really go for helping other survivors then you usually have base humanity, allowing you to defend yourself.

I can agree with you to an extent here, but I'm the Caring-est of Care Bears, and I've had to knee cap KoS survivors to just escape. Maybe it could be a reduced humanity penalty if the other party shot first.

The problem is of course that sometime people are "survivors" but playing bandit and just helped out their friends with a bloodbag or something like that, but that could be fixed, by reducing the humanity you get from helping somebody with the time you helped that specific person, so if a bandit helped his friend bandit the 10th time he only get 5instead of a 1000 humanity points.

This is valid and probably deserves its own post, even though it's a bit esoteric.

[xximrtwoixx 104]

Nothing will be perfect, but you can make improvements.

How does developing and implementing a system that you know is broken from the start make any improvement or utilize limited development resources?

Reactionary fixes should be avoided in development, you don't add new content to address bugs you fix bugs/flaws in design.

Address why people KOS, and don't value other players beyond the gear on their back and you will really address the problem rather than add a bandaid that attempts to turn the game into a two sided TDM where you have to follow arbitrary rules to be on one side.

[The Power Nap 21]

How does developing and implementing a system that you know is broken from the start make any improvement or utilize limited development resources?

Broken and not perfect are two different things. Anyone who's spent time developing software knows that you cannot account for everything, and compromises are made.

[xximrtwoixx 104]

Do you really think the humanity system is merely "not perfect" look at the posts on it, the flaws have been pointed out countless times. There is no way to track the dynamic actions of players with a mechanic and thus you count a specific action (murder) that has thousands of different contexts. To stop everyone from becoming a bandit you humanity "resets" to zero and you can farm it through certain actions, thus the skins don't really tell you or anyone else anything.

This is broken not imperfect, it is fundementally flawed.

The root issues need to be addressed with actual fixes rather than try to use a carrot/stick mechanic on players to get them to stop killing each other.

[Wiley 49]

I've got to agree with 29. The only times I've ever survived someone trying to kill me, I shot first. The first time, I blindsided a guy that was looking for targets. Possibly a bandit action, I'd consider shooting the guy covering the direction I was headed in with a sniper rifle self defense though. The second time, I had the drop, the guy went for his primary and I put him down.

I'd call the second for sure self defense, but under any 'humanity' scheme I've seen proposed, I would be the aggressor.

[The Power Nap 21]

This is broken not imperfect, it is fundementally flawed.

We have a legal system evolved over thousands of years detailing when it is/isn't okay to kill someone, and it is far from perfect. I apologize but your argument just doesn't hold water with me. If your argument is that the humanity system is fundamentally flawed, then my counter is that ArmA is fundamentally flawed because it doesn't properly simulate real life. The bandit system is a way for someone to help other players identify another's playing trends because ArmA can't simulate pheromones, facial ticks, or any of the numerous ques we humans react to.

I've got to agree with 29. The only times I've ever survived someone trying to kill me, I shot first. The first time, I blindsided a guy that was looking for targets. Possibly a bandit action, I'd consider shooting the guy covering the direction I was headed in with a sniper rifle self defense though. The second time, I had the drop, the guy went for his primary and I put him down.

I'd call the second for sure self defense, but under any 'humanity' scheme I've seen proposed, I would be the aggressor.

I'll start this off by saying that, aside from kneecapping the second guy and running off, I'd do exactly what you did in those situations. But I would not have a problem with the penalty in humanity that I got, seems to be the price of surviving.

xXI Mr Two IXx, I think we're at a point where we are going to have to agree to disagree. If you do come up with a better system, please post it as I would be interested.

[magmatrix 38]

This area has to be about the size of the farthest reaching weapon...doesn't make sense.

Better thing would be add a script that identifies if someone has a weapon and has shot recently and if you are in range of his weapon. You could even check if he was facing you when he shot.

Rocket should be able to script that in his sleep.

Sure he would be able to code it up in a jiffy, but that's not the point. Unless you want MASSIVE exploitation of this "feature", you would have to spend LOTS of time to really think it through and actually define these rules correctly first.

You can't just do something like this:

if (otherPlayer.hasWeapon() && otherPlayer.lastShotFiredSeconds() < 10 && otherPlayer.weaponRange < range(me,otherPlayer) && otherPlayer.directionDegreesTowards(me) < 5) {

otherPlayer.isValidTarget=true;

}

That's way too easy to exploit. I can see lots of ways to do it, without having to think very hard...

[The Power Nap 21]

Sure he would be able to code it up in a jiffy, but that's not the point. Unless you want MASSIVE exploitation of this "feature", you would have to spend LOTS of time to really think it through and actually define these rules correctly first.

You can't just do something like this:

if (otherPlayer.hasWeapon() && otherPlayer.lastShotFiredSeconds() < 10 && otherPlayer.weaponRange < range(me,otherPlayer) && otherPlayer.directionDegreesTowards(me) < 5) {

otherPlayer.isValidTarget=true;

}

That's way too easy to exploit. I can see lots of ways to do it, without having to think very hard...

Easiest would be

if((otherplayer.boundingBox().raycast(rifle) == true) && this.shotsFired() && !otherPlayer.isAgressive())

{

this.setAgressive(true);

}

then tacking in this code when another player is killed

if(otherplayer.isAgressive())

{

//Lesser Humanity penalty

//Bandit calculations blah blah

}

else

{

//Greater Humanity penalty

//Bandit calculations blah blah

}

[xximrtwoixx 104]

Wait till player shoots z and turns toward me, then fire. No penalty....

@powernap

There is no legal system, there is no society. Its up to each person/group to ensure their security & prosperity. The only laws that exhist are those you create and can enforce, they extend to the range that you can effectively fire your weapon.

Arma/DayZ isnt broken, it effectivley simulates that anyone armed with anything can be a threat to your life. Further it shows that without rule of law people revert to the violent state of nature.

Thats real life, magically changing the way people look based on bs isnt.

[prestondemaria@gmail.com 65]

Self defense should still lower your humanity. Think about it, you're still killing a person, but to avoid being killed. YOU ARE STILL KILLING SOMEBODY THAT WORKED HARD FOR THEIR STUFF JUST LIKE YOU DID. It wouldn't make sense for it to not change your humanity because you are being inhumane by killing somebody.

[Yatagan 62]

This still wouldn't be ideal. If some guy is pointing a gun at me and telling me to drop my stuff or he shoots me, I'm not going to wait for him to shoot and pray he missed so I can return fire, I (or a friend) is gonna goddamn shoot him in the face.

I think the solution is simple. Killing anyone no matter what lowers your humanity. Killing zombies and helping others raises it.

So if you avoid killing people and plow through 200 zombies you'd have high humanity even if you kill a few people throughout that in self defense.

However if you plow through 20 people in a city, you're humanity plummets.

Edited August 16, 2012 by Yatagan

[The Power Nap 21]

This still wouldn't be ideal. If some guy is pointing a gun at me and telling me to drop my stuff or he shoots me, I'm not going to wait for him to shoot and pray he missed so I can return fire, I (or a friend) is gonna goddamn shoot him in the face.

I think the solution is simple. Killing anyone no matter what lowers your humanity. Killing zombies and helping others raises it.

So if you avoid killing people and plow through 200 zombies you'd have high humanity even if you kill a few people throughout that in self defense.

However if you plow through 20 people in a city, you're humanity plummets.

I don't think the robbery edge case you came up with is an issue. I think my proposed system would work fine. Of all the youtube streams I watched of DayZ, and all the hours I've played, I have yet to see an actual robbery. Quite frankly people just shoot.

[xximrtwoixx 104]

Have you tried robbing someone, people don't give up their gear because it is the only thing that many attribute character value to. They run/shoot, so its easier/safer to simply shoot someone because your not giving up the initiative by warning them.

Go try robbing someone see how it works out, 9/10 they will simply try to shoot back or altF4.

I don't know that you would feel "sad" or have a hit to your humanity if you shot someone for their supplies and then found supplies on them, I could see maybe if they are unarmed, but then the person who shoots the unarmed guy with nothing probably doesn't have any humanity(Or care about it) either. I think because you would be starving/desperate it would be like hunting, and that first deer you shoot. At first your very excited because you executed and actually shot it, then your kind of sad because you killed it, but your excited/happy because you shot it, then you appreciate the deer because you ate it. After a couple times you don't even think about it, its 500 bucks worth of meat on the table and possibly a trophy for the man cave.

The reality is that "humanity" and friendlyness do not exhist in the DayZ universe, we as a player group are telling the story and there is no happy ending with a safe haven, only a bunch of cannibals ready to shoot you for giggles.

[The Power Nap 21]

A bunch of stuff

Seriously, this is a discussion on an alteration to a current mechanic not a philosophic discussion on the validity of 'Lord of the Flies'. You can try and argue that everybody would start shooting each other but that is simply not the case, full stop. Man is a social animal and will suffer brain injury if not in a social environment. ArmA is a simulation, thus shortcuts are needed for all the data you take in on people in real life. The humanity/bandit system is such a shortcut. If you want to argue that it is an incorrect shortcut start a thread/contribute to that thread.

Have you tried robbing someone, people don't give up their gear because it is the only thing that many attribute character value to. They run/shoot, so its easier/safer to simply shoot someone because your not giving up the initiative by warning them.

Go try robbing someone see how it works out, 9/10 they will simply try to shoot back or altF4.

They shoot because death is not real in DayZ. It might work if you get permabanned from the HIVE when you die. We all know that is unfeasible, so workarounds must happen.

[xximrtwoixx 104]

Seriously, this is a discussion on an alteration to a current mechanic not a philosophic discussion on the validity of 'Lord of the Flies'. You can try and argue that everybody would start shooting each other but that is simply not the case, full stop. Man is a social animal and will suffer brain injury if not in a social environment. ArmA is a simulation, thus shortcuts are needed for all the data you take in on people in real life. The humanity/bandit system is such a shortcut. If you want to argue that it is an incorrect shortcut start a thread/contribute to that thread.

They shoot because death is not real in DayZ. It might work if you get permabanned from the HIVE when you die. We all know that is unfeasible, so workarounds must happen.

I like that you link to Hobbes but apparently think the violent state of nature is complete crap.....

If you want protection from the beasts find the worst beast there is, give up your right to protect yourself (ditch your gun), and follow him around. Thats society.

You can make death harsher to better simulate the reality that people would not want to risk their lives, you can simulate specialization so other characters have more value, you can display active/inactive gear on players so you can deduce what they are. These are all examples of things you can do to subtly reduce KOS/DM. You can't judge dynamic interaction with an arbitrary system, thats what you advocate and support.

I have started other threads, and posted on other threads. Do you know that there are alot of other threads that advocate the same thing you do? You should follow your advice.

[The Power Nap 21]

I have started other threads, and posted on other threads. Do you know that there are alot of other threads that advocate the same thing you do? You should follow your advice.

My 4th post in this thread.

I like that you link to Hobbes but apparently think the violent state of nature is complete crap.....

I like that you ignored the 'not a discussion of' before it. You're skimming my posts about as much as I'm skimming yours, in short thanks for the bump.

Edited August 17, 2012 by The Power Nap