The Psychology behind taking a life (long read)

[Theonerayman 0]

So after a couple weeks of playing this experiment and spending the last week before graduation talking with my fellow Psychology Majors (all juniors with, 4 of us are also Philosophy Majors) about the psychology behind this experiment as Rocket is calling it. Now we, for the sake of making it actually into survival mode, going to assume that each person who makes it as a survivor (or Bandit) has the mental capacity to not only accept the fact that every person they have ever known is dead, but there is a good chance that some of them are walking around eating people. We were not going to focus on that aspect. What we did focus on was the impact that taking a human life has on a person.

There is a reason that when one of our men/women in blue, in every police department in the US is involved with a shooting in which they draw their weapon and kill a person they are sent to MANDATORY therapy. The act of killing another human being, be it in defense of yourself, or defense of another, takes a seriously psychological toll on the human psyche.

Now before anyone goes and says "what about people who suffer from sociopathy" that is roughly, from the most generously large numbers we could find, 4% of the entire human population. That means for at least 96% of every single other human being on the planet the taking of another life has some effect on their mental state.

Even trained soldiers from military's around the world who are put in combat situations and fire fights are forced to undergo rigorous psychological testing to determine if they are still able to function as the military needs them to. Why is this? Why is the number of soldiers suffering from P.T.S.D. on the rise? Because the taking of another life is mentally scaring, and it takes, for some individuals decades of therapy to over come. There are still vets from the Vietnam conflict, who at the sound of a fire cracker, drop down to the ground for fear they are being shot at by the Viet Cong, 40 years later.

So what does this little psychology lesson have to do with Dayz? Simple. There needs to be SOME mechanic for taking the life of another. Rocket, think about this for a moment (and yes I have read your multiple interviews where you give no reasoning what so ever for your stance on the loss of life that takes place) you have gone through pain staking development on make sure this experiment is as realistic as possible. There is weather that can lower your body temp, which in turns gets you sick. Falling from 2 meters can easily cause you to break your leg and send you into shock. Getting shot or hit causes you to slowly bleed out and medical attention must be given. You have to eat and drink to keep to yourself alive. BUT at the end of the day, anyone can run around and just shoot anyone else with zero repercussion. Lets take a look at the stats for a second, as of this posting there are 105286 survivors alive and 14362 bandits. That's 7.33 bandits for every survivor. 119,684 people alive total 12% of them are bandits, that means that 12% of the population have taken enough lives to be considered a bandit. Now those people, in game have no repercussions, nothing to make them feel bad for killing so many people so by the very definition of sociopathy, they are indeed sociopaths. Do you see an issue there Rocket? Without some form of control the percentage of sociopaths in this game is over 3x (and by some studies 6x) the percent of sociopaths that likely exist in the world today.

Now we all understand that you don't want to hamper anyone's play style, for choice is king and everyone should be able to choose how they go about survival. But in life, as should be in any true experiment, every action has consequences. The people should HAVE the choice to be a bandit or not, to run around and shoot every person that they see, but there needs to be consequences. Because in the real world, which to this point you have gone through painstaking detail to recreate, a large portion of the bandits (at least 75%) wouldn't be able to sleep at night for the things they did, they would have visions of every single face they killed, and eventually there is a extremely high probability of suffering a mental break down. At which point one of a few things could happen, they could just walk around looking like one of the zombies on the map, they would just ball up in cry until they starved or something ate them. Or they would put the barrel of their gun into their own mouths and pull the trigger to try and escape the images that haunt them.

You say that limiting pvp would take away the spirit of the experiment. But we have all unanimously agreed over 12 long hours of discussion, if your aim of this experiment really is to be as real as possible you are grossly overlooking a very important part of the survival aspect. Because while shooting someone else and taking their things is a viable survival strategy (in theory) people might rethink shooting the guy in the back and taking his things after a week of not being able to close their eyes because they see the face of the man they killed after they rolled him over and picked him clean.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to read all of this.

[worst2first 71]

You're right. There needs to be a major negative psychological downside to killing survivors. I'm not sure how it would work in terms of game mechanics but it needs to be addressed.

A disturbing, yet interesting parallel is the Nazi Einsatzgruppen in World War II. The psychological burden was too much even for hardened killers and the men began to break down.

[Theonerayman 0]

Bravo sir (or madam), one of my colleagues actually brought up the SS death squads in which you refer but in this writing I was afraid that very few would know what I would be talking about. So thank you for bringing it up, you just proved that I was mistaken in that assumption.

[pendergraft 1]

I think having the faces of your victims suddenly pop up on your screen while screeching "WHY DID YOU KILL ME?!" at random intervals is a wonderful idea. For full-effect, the haunting visages should be melded with a picture of Captain Howdy.

[fackstah 31]

i think the persons face you killed comes backto haunt you likea delision or somthing or ilke an apiration like hey fucker you killed me im haunting you haha

[zombdrac 0]

Integrating that kind of psychological element into the game wouldn't work, and would at best be cheesy. The physical health of the character, his needs for food, water, heat, these are inescapable biological necessities that are both realistic and within game confines. What I mean by game confines is that, though realism is an aim of this video game, it is, at the end of the day, a game. It's a technologically advanced form of chess, with rules to enhance the experience; ultimately, however, the psychology of the character, avatar, (whatever you want to call it), must be the psychology of the person controlling it. Once you begin taking the mind game away from the players and instituting a game limitation to it, then an integral piece of the game is lost.

Now, there are instances of games that use this psychological 'hinge' as a game mechanic. Eternal Darkness and Amnesia come to mind. But in the case of these two games, there is no competition between players, it is a man/woman versus the enviroment (a scary house, malevolent forces, etc) it's easier to integrate those elements into a game of that type. But even then, the experience must be limited to the scripted experience that the developers want you to have. It's a haunted house on their terms.

For a game like Day Z, an open world of competitive play, it will not work.

[pendergraft 1]

O.K., so they should have to find and take antipsychotics to control the hallucinations. And there should be a 5% chance that the drugs were laced with cyanide by the Tylenol bandit.

[Theonerayman 0]

Integrating that kind of psychological element into the game wouldn't work' date=' and would at best be cheesy. The physical health of the character, his needs for food, water, heat, these are inescapable biological necessities that are both realistic and within game confines. What I mean by game confines is that, though realism is an aim of this video game, it is, at the end of the day, a game. It's a technologically advanced form of chess, with rules to enhance the experience; ultimately, however, the psychology of the character, avatar, (whatever you want to call it), must be the psychology of the person controlling it. Once you begin taking the mind game away from the players and instituting a game limitation to it, then an integral piece of the game is lost.

Now, there are instances of games that use this psychological 'hinge' as a game mechanic. Eternal Darkness and Amnesia come to mind. But in the case of these two games, there is no competition between players, it is a man/woman versus the enviroment (a scary house, malevolent forces, etc) it's easier to integrate those elements into a game of that type. But even then, the experience must be limited to the scripted experience that the developers want you to have. It's a haunted house on their terms.

For a game like Day Z, an open world of competitive play, it will not work.

[/quote']

Im not advocating the faces jumping on your screen ideas that some of the above posters are. But I keep seeing people who say that it wouldn't work. I think when I am seeing people say that, they are substituting "it wouldn't let anyone do whatever they wanted" and replacing it with "it just wouldn't work". The mechanic that we sat around and came up with in terms of game play is rather simple. After you kill X amount of people (lets say 10) your mind can no longer sustain and the character is lost. People always want to have choice without any of the consequences of their choices. In a experiment such as this where realism is the key, overlooking this is a gross negligence.

[aphex187 52]

Killed a guy last night with a survivor skin on after he had blasted my m8 for no reason. Camping on the side of the tree filled hill at Stary (a place where i was also killed that morning), i ran up behind him and as i was taking aim he turned and fired along with me, both of us died but i was glad in what i had done.

Now before i shot him i was thinking, was he a bandit all along? i mean there's noway of telling who is who in this game now and that's why i'm a firm believer in having the bandit skin scorned onto these killers! People can now leisurely blast someone in the face with no repercussions at all....

[LastShenanigan 8]

That was really well thought out, an interesting read all around. You even kept me up past when I wanted to go to sleep heh. I'll try and add to the discussion as best I can.

Police officer, Military personnel... these people are part of a society. They receive therapy to help them cope because for our entire lives we're taught its wrong to kill another person. We want them to remain strong and dedicate to that society even though what they may have done goes against it's principals. I'm not saying I don't think "bandits" could suffer from P.T.S.D. but the behavior they exhibit existed long before society did. In a sense it still exists today in places which do not value human life and see it only as a resource.

I'd also like to point out I draw a huge line between the people who kill other players simply because they spawn with a pistol, and those who kill others because they're starving and don't trust a stranger enough to ask him for something to eat. Also it is easy to forget that a large amount of "bandits" belong to tightly knit groups that only cooperate amongst themselves, shooting any stranger they deem is a threat or has something the group could use.

In the long run the real issue with you idea is that we all realize we're players and no one dies permanently in dayz. Adding some sort of "sanity" feature onto the game would be nothing more then a meta-game. Like humanity before the change, players would simply use whatever means they can to bring it back up to healthy levels before they go player hunting. You can't force a player who spawns with a gun and food to seek the company of others. They need to be trapped in a small building with a broken leg, no ammo left and a real reason to fear respawning before they'd call out for help. They could meet their new best friend. Or their opinion of other players in Dayz could fall even further when the person who arrives is not there to save them. I guess that could be our real problem with cooperating willingly with strangers, we all remember what happened to us before we respawned.

[pendergraft 1]

Something similar could work like gangbusters. If this is snuck into the next patch we could be looking at a significant drop in banditry overnight. Also, involuntary manslaughter charges.

[Theonerayman 0]

That was really well thought out' date=' an interesting read all around. You even kept me up past when I wanted to go to sleep heh. I'll try and add to the discussion as best I can.

Police officer, Military personnel... these people are part of a society. They receive therapy to help them cope because for our entire lives we're taught its wrong to kill another person. We want them to remain strong and dedicate to that society even though what they may have done goes against it's principals. I'm not saying I don't think "bandits" could suffer from P.T.S.D. but the behavior they exhibit existed long before society did. In a sense it still exists today in places which do not value human life and see it only as a resource.

I'd also like to point out I draw a huge line between the people who kill other players simply because they spawn with a pistol, and those who kill others because they're starving and don't trust a stranger enough to ask him for something to eat. Also it is easy to forget that a large amount of "bandits" belong to tightly knit groups that only cooperate amongst themselves, shooting any stranger they deem is a threat or has something the group could use.

In the long run the real issue with you idea is that we all realize we're players and no one dies permanently in dayz. Adding some sort of "sanity" feature onto the game would be nothing more then a meta-game. Like humanity before the change, players would simply use whatever means they can to bring it back up to healthy levels before they go player hunting. You can't force a player who spawns with a gun and food to seek the company of others. They need to be trapped in a small building with a broken leg, no ammo left and a real reason to fear respawning before they'd call out for help. They could meet their new best friend. Or their opinion of other players in Dayz could fall even further when the person who arrives is not there to save them. I guess that could be our real problem with cooperating willingly with strangers, we all remember what happened to us before we respawned.

[/quote']

I am glad that you enjoyed the read, and I hope that everyone who reads it, whether they agree with our (my colleagues and myself) thesis or couldn't disagree with it more find it interesting none the less.

That being said no matter what system could possibly be implemented there is always going to be a group of people who try and game the system, but with between 3-6x the amount of bandits that should logically exist even if the system cut the number of bandits by a 3rd there would be progress made in getting the statistics a little less skewed, there is always going to be that 4% of the population who are just psychopaths who could care less. But right now we are, as a community much higher than that.

[Drostan 0]

Sociopaths (In times of yore called psychopaths) are considered, from an evolutionary psychological point of view to be societal parasites, where not valuing human life is integral to their own survival. They instinctively need to lie, steal, cheat, and even kill, to further their own needs and goals. In a survival scenario, this would prevent them from having an excessive mental load, and allow them to focus more on survival. Keep in mind, even the most expansive studies on Sociopathy have said that it is impossible to tell how many members of society are sociopaths, given their ability to lie with ease.

Many people currently are so domesticated by society, the comfort of not having to fight to survive, that they absolutely will not take another human's life, even if it means saving their own(myself included) Many of these people will be completely unable to adapt to a survival situation, and will probably get eaten by zombies or shot up by bandits.

Reason would suggest that the majority of people surviving a significant period in a zombie apocalypse would have some sort of coping mechanism, relating to killing another human being. It can also be reasoned that many of the "bandits" are simply people that have completely lost their minds, and simply go around killing and surviving.

Edit: Also, games would not be fun without PvP. Otherwise we'd just be facing simple, mindless AI.

[perestain 33]

Integrating that kind of psychological element into the game wouldn't work' date=' and would at best be cheesy. The physical health of the character, his needs for food, water, heat, these are inescapable biological necessities that are both realistic and within game confines. What I mean by game confines is that, though realism is an aim of this video game, it is, at the end of the day, a game. It's a technologically advanced form of chess, with rules to enhance the experience; ultimately, however, the psychology of the character, avatar, (whatever you want to call it), must be the psychology of the person controlling it. Once you begin taking the mind game away from the players and instituting a game limitation to it, then an integral piece of the game is lost.

Now, there are instances of games that use this psychological 'hinge' as a game mechanic. Eternal Darkness and Amnesia come to mind. But in the case of these two games, there is no competition between players, it is a man/woman versus the enviroment (a scary house, malevolent forces, etc) it's easier to integrate those elements into a game of that type. But even then, the experience must be limited to the scripted experience that the developers want you to have. It's a haunted house on their terms.

For a game like Day Z, an open world of competitive play, it will not work.

[/quote']

Dayz is not a competitive game whatsoever.

There is no need to play "against" other people.

There is no objective, no definition of what you must do to win.

There is no transparent way to compare any "archievements" to others, other than zombies killed maybe, but you obviously did not mean that.

To me, considering dayz competitive is rather an excuse from people who play excessive PvP and simply don't want to face the fact that they take enjoyment in ruining other unsuspecting peoples game progress.

If you want to play to win and be competitive, why not play a game which IS competitive, like starcraft or counterstrike? Or is it not fun anymore when you're getting spanked in a true competitive environment, where the goal of the game actually is to beat other players, and they will not be as unsuspecting?

Don't get me wrong, bandits make the game. But competitive? No. This is not esports, this is enjoying a game-world alone or with friends.

tl,dr: No rules, no definition of victory -> not a competitive game.

[Hawk24 94]

This whole system implies that every character in DayZ has the same mental abilities and moral tresholds

Yet you may find people that couldn't pull the trigger when their life depends on it, others would shoot your face and laugh about it

And there's people between these 2 extremes

Point being, you can't simulate psychological stress in a videogame unless you have a confined enviroment like Amnesia

But even in Amnesia, where your characters sanity slowly starts drifting away, it's an awkwardly pointless mechanic once you get the hang of it

I can't see how it would work in an open world sandbox like DayZ

It adds basically nothing to the gameplay experience at all, it would only add an occasional fetch quest once you have killed too many human beings

[Theonerayman 0]

Sociopaths (In times of yore called psychopaths) are considered' date=' from an evolutionary psychological point of view to be societal parasites, where not valuing human life is integral to their own survival. They instinctively need to lie, steal, cheat, and even kill, to further their own needs and goals. In a survival scenario, this would prevent them from having an excessive mental load, and allow them to focus more on survival. Keep in mind, even the most expansive studies on Sociopathy have said that it is impossible to tell how many members of society are sociopaths, given their ability to lie with ease.

Many people currently are so domesticated by society, the comfort of not having to fight to survive, that they absolutely will not take another human's life, even if it means saving their own(myself included) Many of these people will be completely unable to adapt to a survival situation, and will probably get eaten by zombies or shot up by bandits.

Reason would suggest that the majority of people surviving a significant period in a zombie apocalypse would have some sort of coping mechanism, relating to killing another human being. It can also be reasoned that many of the "bandits" are simply people that have completely lost their minds, and simply go around killing and surviving.

Edit: Also, games would not be fun without PvP. Otherwise we'd just be facing simple, mindless AI.

[/quote']

You are correct in there not being any way to tell 100% the exact number of sociopaths there are on the planet, but some very smart people who know a lot more about these things than anyone I have ever talked to or met are pretty certain the number lies somewhere between 2-4%. And as I said in the original topic we dismissed the fact that a massive amount of the population just wouldn't mentally have the ability to even get up out of bed, let alone try and survive. And you are also correct that people who are actually surviving would almost certainly have some sort of coping mechanism. Much like soldiers in a fire fight. Their survival instinct kicks in and they shoot another human being to survive. There is also a massive difference between a man who kills another man because he has to, and someone who does it for the "lolz". That is also why in discussing game play mechanics we all agreed that it shouldn't just be "you shoot one person and your on the verge of mental breakdown" because sometimes that survival instinct will be so strong that no amount of "domestication" as you put it will over write (I also really do like your idea of domestication, I personally have never thought of it that way, but its very apt to the situation)

And in your response to your edit. You have far more to worry about than just the mindless AI. Think of it this way, you are in a group of 5, (much like my friend's and are in this experiment) everyone has to eat and drink. But rarely does enough food for 5 people have to spawn to sustain 5 people for a prolonged period of time. They have already decided that when (not if, we are sure it will) the time comes they will all roll a dice to see who has to sacrifice themselves so the rest of them can live. Currently they are held up in a undisclosed location where a decent amount of supplies spawn but food is scarce and after a 10 hour session today this ALMOST happened. They had 2 people blinking red with food, and at the zero hour a can of frank and beans (1) spawned and those two people were both spared. When playing at long times, this could easily happen again.

[deweyhewson 1]

If you get into character, this response is already felt.

Read this, for example: http://www.dayzdiary.com/2012/05/chapter-5-my-soul-for-a-can-of-beans/

And no, that's not a shameless plug; it's directly relevant to the subject at hand. In fact, I tweeted only yesterday that, having studied psychology in-depth myself, it is both fascinating and exhilarating to see how it plays out within the confines of the DayZ world.

Artificial game mechanics intended to represent real world human psychological effects would be a mistake, in my opinion, because they could never come close to the real thing. I find that human psychology already is playing a huge role in the world, even from those who don't even begin to try to get into character.

[Theonerayman 0]

This whole system implies that every character in DayZ has the same mental abilities and moral tresholds

Yet you may find people that couldn't pull the trigger when their life depends on it' date=' others would shoot your face and laugh about it

And there's people between these 2 extremes

Point being, you can't simulate psychological stress in a videogame unless you have a confined enviroment like Amnesia

But even in Amnesia, where your characters sanity slowly starts drifting away, it's an awkwardly pointless mechanic once you get the hang of it

I can't see how it would work in an open world sandbox like DayZ

It adds basically nothing to the gameplay experience at all, it would only add an occasional fetch quest once you have killed too many human beings

[/quote']

I am going to have to disagree with that last statement, let me set up a scenario and we will look at it with 2 different styles of game play. You are starving and thirsty, its at least 10 miles to the closest well for water and food is who knows how far away. You still have a solid amount of ammo for your weapon. Your sitting there wondering how in the heck you are going to survive. Someone, who isn't paying a ton of attention walks right past you laying in the grass. Now in Dayz as it stands right now, you can shoot the person in hope that he has some food and water on him, eat, drink and go on about your business and there is zero chance that anything bad will ever happen to you (from a gameplay stand point) for ending the life of that person. Now in Dayz with SOME system (again we will use the one we came up with since I have yet to hear another one that would work) you very would likely think twice about shooting that person, especially if you had gotten yourself in the situation before. Lets say in this system when your character is created on the server side a number is randomly assigned (instead of the base 10 we have used before) you wouldn't know if killing that ONE person would be enough to drive you insane. It would make you think more strategically, and less blood thirsty. And again, there is going to be people that no matter what are just going to shoot everyone they see and nothing will deter them, but a system would deter some people.

[Hawk24 94]

I am going to have to disagree with that last statement' date=' let me set up a scenario and we will look at it with 2 different styles of game play. You are starving and thirsty, its at least 10 miles to the closest well for water and food is who knows how far away. You still have a solid amount of ammo for your weapon. Your sitting there wondering how in the heck you are going to survive. Someone, who isn't paying a ton of attention walks right past you laying in the grass. Now in Dayz as it stands right now, you can shoot the person in hope that he has some food and water on him, eat, drink and go on about your business and there is zero chance that anything bad will ever happen to you (from a gameplay stand point) for ending the life of that person. Now in Dayz with SOME system (again we will use the one we came up with since I have yet to hear another one that would work) you very would likely think twice about shooting that person, especially if you had gotten yourself in the situation before. Lets say in this system when your character is created on the server side a number is randomly assigned (instead of the base 10 we have used before) you wouldn't know if killing that ONE person would be enough to drive you insane. It would make you think more strategically, and less blood thirsty. And again, there is going to be people that no matter what are just going to shoot everyone they see and nothing will deter them, but a system would deter some people.

[/quote']

"Oh I'm not going to shoot that poor bastard because I might go insane"

That's just a nice way of saying "Remove PvP from the game through an artificial limitation"

Someone, who isn't paying a ton of attention walks right past you laying in the grass. Now in Dayz as it stands right now, you can shoot the person (...) and there is zero chance that anything bad will ever happen to you

And you know why?

Because the person I shot lacked situational awareness

If he would've had scanned his surroundings he might've noticed me and reacted

He fails to do so, he dies

There should be no punishment for me when others fail to play the game, just because a random number has decided I would mentally break down from a single human kill

Again, see my Amnesia reference, you need a confined enviroment for something like this to work, and it barely does in Amnesia already

Having a sanitiy meter in ArmA2 would be, as other described it, a "cheesy" mechanic at best

[Theonerayman 0]

If you get into character' date=' this response is already felt.

Read this, for example: http://www.dayzdiary.com/2012/05/chapter-5-my-soul-for-a-can-of-beans/

And no, that's not a shameless plug; it's directly relevant to the subject at hand. In fact, I tweeted only yesterday that, having studied psychology in-depth myself, it is both fascinating and exhilarating to see how it plays out within the confines of the DayZ world.

Artificial game mechanics intended to represent real world human psychological effects would be a mistake, in my opinion, because they could never come close to the real thing. I find that human psychology already is playing a huge role in the world, even from those who don't even begin to try to get into character.

[/quote']

Forgive me if I am assuming here, but it seems to be that you are implying that since the system wouldn't be perfect and exactly life like that it shouldn't be implemented. And again if I am wrong I will apologize. But look at our current food and water system. You have to eat and drink roughly every 2-3 hours in game. The human body can go much longer without food, and dieing of hunger is far from horrid and painful. Your body releases endorphin as it breaks down its own organs for food. And there have been numerous cases in which people have gone a few days without water and survived. Yet the system is there in its current incarnation and we accept it. The new weather system, the odds of you catching a cold on a sunny day because you stood in the rain for a little bit are very small..but stand outside in the rain to long and your temp drops and eventually you get sick. Its not perfect but we all understand. This would be no different, a system while not perfect is there to mimic a much more complicated real life process.

[tehreaver 0]

I honestly have no idea how this guy majored in psych. I think you're failing to realize that the world has been infested with zombies and all morals would be completely dropped in a real life scenario if you were a survivor living for more than 2 weeks. So all of these statistics mean absolutely nothing in a zombie apocalypse.

[Drostan 0]

Also keep in mind that some people, in times of extreme stress/prejudice/opposition will truly snap, band together, and be ruthless monsters. (bandits) It's entirely likely that out of the people that are physically strong enough to survive the zombie apocalypse we've been presented with, a good 17% could be the ones that snap and kill everything.

I personally see no need to implement a psychological mechanic, because that's the one thing in survival that is not concrete. There is no way to accurately guess how anyone would respond to a high-stress situation.

I do agree that there needs to be a mechanic to at least slightly discourage excessive player killing, because it's simply not fun to be sneaking tactically through a town, only to have a CZ round embedded in your skull. I've been on both ends of the banditry fight. I've been a survivor helping people, and I've been a bandit killing people. Some people enjoy getting into character and roleplaying how their character would be. No one enjoys having dictated to them how their character thinks and responds, psychologically.

[Theonerayman 0]

I am going to have to disagree with that last statement' date=' let me set up a scenario and we will look at it with 2 different styles of game play. You are starving and thirsty, its at least 10 miles to the closest well for water and food is who knows how far away. You still have a solid amount of ammo for your weapon. Your sitting there wondering how in the heck you are going to survive. Someone, who isn't paying a ton of attention walks right past you laying in the grass. Now in Dayz as it stands right now, you can shoot the person in hope that he has some food and water on him, eat, drink and go on about your business and there is zero chance that anything bad will ever happen to you (from a gameplay stand point) for ending the life of that person. Now in Dayz with SOME system (again we will use the one we came up with since I have yet to hear another one that would work) you very would likely think twice about shooting that person, especially if you had gotten yourself in the situation before. Lets say in this system when your character is created on the server side a number is randomly assigned (instead of the base 10 we have used before) you wouldn't know if killing that ONE person would be enough to drive you insane. It would make you think more strategically, and less blood thirsty. And again, there is going to be people that no matter what are just going to shoot everyone they see and nothing will deter them, but a system would deter some people.

[/quote']

"Oh I'm not going to shoot that poor bastard because I might go insane"

That's just a nice way of saying "Remove PvP from the game through an artificial limitation"

Someone, who isn't paying a ton of attention walks right past you laying in the grass. Now in Dayz as it stands right now, you can shoot the person (...) and there is zero chance that anything bad will ever happen to you

And you know why?

Because the person I shot lacked situational awareness

If he would've had scanned his surroundings he might've noticed me and reacted

He fails to do so, he dies

There should be no punishment for me when others fail to play the game, just because a random number has decided I would mentally break down from a single human kill

Again, see my Amnesia reference, you need a confined enviroment for something like this to work, and it barely does in Amnesia already

Having a sanitiy meter in ArmA2 would be, as other described it, a "cheesy" mechanic at best

Wow..talking about missing the point. The point was that you had a choice and with those choices there are consequences. Do you continue to scavenge for food/water and maybe run out of time, or do you take the shot knowing that the strain on your sanity could kill you. We call it the "Have your cake and eat it to" theory. In which a person wants everything but none of the responsibility that goes along with it. Without totally resulting to a straw man argument lets akin it to this. The people who want to just run around and shoot everyone and have no downside are like a child who wants a puppy. They wanna hug it, and love it, put it on a leash and take it for a walk, show off to their friends this cute adorable little dog. But when it comes time to clean up said puppy's poop they don't wanna have to clean up after it. They don't wanna have to feed it. They just wanna love it, and show it off and let someone else take care of unpleasant stuff. (As much as I would like to take credit for that analogy I cannot, my friend Richard ((No Deg not you if your reading this eventually)) came up with it in our discussions)

[Drostan 0]

I honestly have no idea how this guy majored in psych. I think you're failing to realize that the world has been infested with zombies and all morals would be completely dropped in a real life scenario if you were a survivor living for more than 2 weeks. So all of these statistics mean absolutely nothing in a zombie apocalypse.

Actually I find it quite logical that in a survival situation(ultimately what the zombie apocalypse is) that people will and do tend to band together in order to survive.

Also, a good example of a high-stress survival situation that may provide a decent analogue to the psychological area of this discussion. When the titanic sank, people only filled the boats to(I'm not sure on this number, it's roundabout) about 30% of their capacity, and many of the upper-class passengers refused to allow the poorer passengers into their life boats. They became greedy and self-serving, only looking to their own survival. On the upside, a decent portion of the passengers and crew DID try to pull as many people out of the water as possible.

[tehreaver 0]

I honestly have no idea how this guy majored in psych. I think you're failing to realize that the world has been infested with zombies and all morals would be completely dropped in a real life scenario if you were a survivor living for more than 2 weeks. So all of these statistics mean absolutely nothing in a zombie apocalypse.

Actually I find it quite logical that in a survival situation(ultimately what the zombie apocalypse is) that people will and do tend to band together in order to survive.

Also' date=' a good example of a high-stress survival situation that may provide a decent analogue to the psychological area of this discussion. When the titanic sank, people only filled the boats to(I'm not sure on this number, it's roundabout) about 30% of their capacity, and many of the upper-class passengers refused to allow the poorer passengers into their life boats. They became greedy and self-serving, only looking to their own survival. On the upside, a decent portion of the passengers and crew DID try to pull as many people out of the water as possible.

[/quote']

I didn't say anything about not banding together but I'm saying is that if you manage to live in a real zombie apocalypse for 2 weeks, most morals will be dropped and you WILL kill someone for food. Also if there was someone that wasn't in your party and you saw that they had a gun, I'm sure it would be a shoot first ask later type deal.