The survivor/bandit problem or: DayZ is a lemon market

[TheCoconutChef 9]

So you've been playing on a server for a little while now as a lone wolf and you've got some good gears. As you're running on the outskirt of some village, you see two survivor scavanging some buildings. You think it'd be nice to team up with them and so you hide and announce yourself on the chat. You know it's risky but you feel it's worth a shot.

You talk a little with them and they seem friendly enough, so you decide to start approaching and, of course, as you do, they shoot you in the face.

You then remember that you should "trust no one" and you tell yourself that, next time you see someone, you're gonna shoot him right away or hide until he's gone and, even if somebody claim to be friendly,

.

These situations happens all the time and there's something common to all of them. The seller has more information than the buyer.

If it isn't obvious to you why this particular element is what is breaking the "cooperation market", let me explain.

I'm assuming there's two person: somebody who wants to cooperate (a "buyer" of cooperation) and somebody whose cooperation is wanted (a "seller" of cooperation). Let's assume furthermore that there are two types of player: cooperator and bandit, the first one wanting to cooperate and second one wanting to kill everyone, and that bandit form 20% of the players.

Now what happens in the context of no information? As a buyer, regardless of wether or not the guy you want to cooperate with is a bandit or a cooperator, both of them have all the incentive to answer positively to your demand for cooperation, and I would argue the bandit even more so than the genuine cooperator and you can't distinguish between them. Screwing you over is just too tempting and, even with only 20% assumed bandit, it's enough to tell you not to take the risk or, put another way, it's enough to keep you out of the market. As a buyer, you never know who you're buying from, you only know there's a good chance of getting killed, and this is enough for you never to initiate contact with anyone.

The skin system does nothing to adress this, as a survivor skin is not precise enough to tell you anything about the person you're "buying" from. There's no rellevent information attached to it. How did this person react to other cooperation request? Did he betray or got betrayed? Did he politely refuse to past request and let the other person go?

Because of this, we find ourselves in a situation in which betrayors (bandit) are strongly incentivized to put themselves on the market (to betray) and those who want to cooperate will tend to withdraw (because there's too much risk) so that the only person left on the market are bandits, and cooperator stay hidden. Bad business drives out the good.

Thus : "Trust no one". (This moto, by the way, is not for bandit. It's for people who are likely to offer their trust or, said another way, it's an advice telling cooperator to stay out of the market)

This situation is exactly identical to the one described in this article, and the solution to it is, therefore, exactly the same.

We need a better information system.

I didn't really know where else to put this and I believe it's accurate enough to have it in writing. So discussion is welcomed I guess.

[grezvany13 56]

Lemons... somebody said LEMONS :o

btw... I have no idea what you're talking about, just play the game and go with the flow... The ingame economy will stabalize itself when more content is added and more options for teamplay is created.

[tad@tadshackles.com 75]

I 100% sympathize with your point but try to think about a REAL WORLD situation like this. you and a friend have hatchets and and a makarov. a dude rolls up on you with a ghillie, an AS50, meat, meds, all the tools and says "Wanna be friends?"

He is a walking treasure chest. In a real world survival scenario killing that guy and taking his treasure trove would prove more valuable to you and your friends survival. I am not supporting banditry, I am merely saying that THIS is reality. If you are geared. get out of the city, meet some real friends (or become a medic and friends become abundant) and enjoy it.

You will get killed by bandits.

You will get axed by coastal cuties

You will glitch off some stairs and die.

These things are part of DayZ. Don't get attached to your gear, Don't get attached to your locale. Just Survive. And don't hate people who choose to survive in a more ruthless manner than you.

This is DayZ - This is your story!

[bazbake 456]

Wait. You think three people covering each others' backs puts you in a worse situation than two people covering each others' backs with the same amount of weaponry?

Oh, you are definitely going to survive the apocalypse....

[airborne01@comcast.net 23]

I was talking to a friend about this the other day, and while I disagree with the bandit skins, I think there should be SOME way to evaluate the problem w/o letting others pick out bandit vs. friendly at 700 yards.

When you meet someone in RL, you tend to get a feeling about that person one way or another, this is very hard to convey in the game, but I have an idea.

Many games have a slider bar that is used to age your character.. if we all started out as "fresh-faced youths" and that slider bar was moved up a year each time we killed a player, it would signify the guilt that hangs over that person.

By doing it incrementally, you would not be punishing someone who has had to kill in self-defense occasionally, and at the same time making it harder for a player to gauge someones "honesty" at 300 yards. You would have to get closer to decide whether you want to lower your gun or not.

[lun4tic 8]

I'm fairly certain this is exactly the environment intended.

[TheCoconutChef 9]

I 100% sympathize with your point but try to think about a REAL WORLD situation like this.

I get your point, but I try never to think in terms of real world and always in terms of kinds of gaming experiences. You don't respawn in the real world either.

He is a walking treasure chest. In a real world survival scenario killing that guy and taking his treasure trove would prove more valuable to you and your friends survival.

Short term I agree. But longer term? Think that, right now, in the game, that person would NEVER roll up to you to ask to be friend. He'd kill you right away or avoid you.

Current game mechanic makes this almost unavoidable and people have to go around it in order to make cooperation happen (they have to use this forum and third party communication software).

These things are part of DayZ. Don't get attached to your gear, Don't get attached to your locale. Just Survive. And don't hate people who choose to survive in a more ruthless manner than you.

I get that they are part of DayZ but what I'm trying to say is that other things could be part of it on top of it but right now they are almost actively prohibited. I'm not talking about preventing banditry, I'm talking about giving people who want to cooperate some way of getting information.

I'm not saying that trying to get this information should not get you killed some times or that betrayal could not happen. See below.

---

I was talking to a friend about this the other day, and while I disagree with the bandit skins, I think there should be SOME way to evaluate the problem w/o letting others pick out bandit vs. friendly at 700 yards.

When you meet someone in RL, you tend to get a feeling about that person one way or another, this is very hard to convey in the game, but I have an idea.

Many games have a slider bar that is used to age your character.. if we all started out as "fresh-faced youths" and that slider bar was moved up a year each time we killed a player, it would signify the guilt that hangs over that person.

By doing it incrementally, you would not be punishing someone who has had to kill in self-defense occasionally, and at the same time making it harder for a player to gauge someones "honesty" at 300 yards. You would have to get closer to decide whether you want to lower your gun or not.

I have an extremly (albeit more precise) similar proposition which, like yours, entail that you get close to the person in order to get reliable info (maybe 20-30 meters? closer?). That way, those who want to kill at sight just do (in my system, those kills aren't even recorded) and those who want to cooperate have a chance to ask themselves "should I get closer to see what this guy is about"?

There's several way of doing this.

[TheBaby 61]

Because of this, we find ourselves in a situation in which betrayors (bandit) are strongly incentivized to put themselves on the market (to betray) and those who want to cooperate will tend to withdraw (because there's too much risk) so that the only person left on the market are bandits, and cooperator stay hidden. Bad business drives out the good.

Assumption. I think the analogy is bad as a whole really, just confusing and it isn't telling me anything that isn't intuitive.

Maybe you're just 'selling' to people who aren't 'buyers'

I'm sure everyone is aware that the core differences between the actual world and virtual worlds maybe some of the problems here unsolvable. Fundamentally, you can have economic theories if you like, but people don't act like they do in Dayz in the real world.

More information is just crazy, you can't get information about people from looking at them.. or even talking to them half the time. You don't get the information in 1 on 1's about a persons history, unless you're psychic or some shit. This is why, like in the criticisms on The Market for Lemons I think its obvious that you need 3rd parties to verify someone's claims.. you shouldn't be able to do this yourself it fundamentally breaks the game. You just gotta do something along the lines of what the Trusted Medics of the Wasteland and the Coalition in general are doing.

Edited September 27, 2012 by TheBaby

[sostronk 334]

I'm a bandit, to most players. I recently got killed by a clan. I respawn. I hit up towns and Im doing really bad gear wise from looting. I manage to get an AK74 and 1 mag. No tools or anything. I see a guy with an M16 killing zeds. I kill the guy. Im fully geared now, enough to get me north. It would have taken me a substantially more time to loot this gear. I head north to high loot spawns where Im now capable of dealing with other players with high end gear. Nobody was there so I clear out the loot. I now have most of what I need. But players are a threat to me now. The best way to neutralize the threat is to send them back to the coast with no gear. Id love to coop with them, but I dont trust anyone except for people I know.

Edited September 27, 2012 by sostronk

[Swineflew 480]

You're taught as a child to not trust strangers.

You even said yourself in the very first paragraph it was a risk, you went in knowing there was a good chance you'd get shot, and you still went up to them. This isn't a survivor/bandit issue or a problem with dayz.

PEBKAC.

[declan223@gmail.com 271]

I agree that there needs to be more of a disincentive to be a bandit and more of an incentive to be a survivor or hero. A good 50% of my deaths are from another player masquerading as a 'friendly' survivor and it pisses me off. I've only met 2 actually friendly survivors and I don't like having to shoot other players because I don't know their intent. I don't want to be a bandit. I don't want to have to shoot other players who maybe are trying to just play the game like a survivor not a bandit or murderer but a have little choice. It annoys me when I am killed, especially when I have a really good character and I'm sure most people feel the same about it as I do. I am out there to have fun and I don't like having to possibly ruin someone else's.

[Swineflew 480]

disincentive & more of an incentive

There is a big big difference here. Punishing a certain type of gameplay is bad game design.

Rewarding a type of gameplay is good design.

There is a difference. Rewarding "survivor" play is a better way to "balance" than discouraging "bandit" play.

[Sutinen 635]

The first one who strikes gets the advantage, don't wait to be killed by a bandit.

[SgtDouglas 87]

I agree that there needs to be more of a disincentive to be a bandit and more of an incentive to be a survivor or hero. A good 50% of my deaths are from another player masquerading as a 'friendly' survivor and it pisses me off. I've only met 2 actually friendly survivors and I don't like having to shoot other players because I don't know their intent. I don't want to be a bandit. I don't want to have to shoot other players who maybe are trying to just play the game like a survivor not a bandit or murderer but a have little choice. It annoys me when I am killed, especially when I have a really good character and I'm sure most people feel the same about it as I do. I am out there to have fun and I don't like having to possibly ruin someone else's.

I know that feel bro, I just try to help as many people have fun with the game instead of getting angry and depressed because some douchebag felt that they didn't want to waste 30 minutes finding gear. If I see a bandit skin, I don't shoot immediately. How do I know they didn't use self defense to protect themselves or even their friends. What Rocket needs to consider implementing is a system in which players can kill hostile players without losing humanity. Perhaps, if they shoot first, it could cancel out the humanity loss if you kill them? But if they kill you, they still lose humanity because they shot first?

Just an idea

[FractalMind 9]

I feel like EVENTUALLY being able to get a read off of someone from a closer distance should become available after days of survival. So say you are a fresh spawn and say that the mechanic which Rocket mentioned before of aiming at a person and being able to hear a heartbeat that would be representative of how low their humanity is. I feel like this is a great way to determine someones "alignment" in a more intuitive and passive way, but this "skill" would develop over the course of your survival. So back to what I was saying about being a fresh spawn: you wouldn't be able to get a read off of players right away. You survive for a few days and over the course of those few days you begin to develop this sense. I think that would be a good way to go about it. Maybe you only develop this skill by "Stalking" players. I'm not sure how stalking would be defined in code terms, but I think that would be an interesting way to grow into a more proficient character and wouldn't break the world by any means. This mechanic is not deaf friendly though