Incentives to Cooperative Play

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

At least once per day I see someone post a comment to the effect of there being "no reason to cooperate" or "no benefit to grouping up." I grow weary of posting these reasons as a response time and time again, so I am creating a thread to which I can link in the future. It should also serve as an aggregate for ideas on cooperative play - if you have your own that I have not listed here, please add them in the thread and I will update the list as time goes on.

Understand that I am not suggesting the game is "complete" with respect to cooperative play and I certainly welcome the addition of new, more complex mechanics that facilitate cooperation - such as fortifying positions, taking over settlements to establish outposts, etc. I am simply providing these as a counter to the people who claim that there are currently "no" reasons to do so - often followed quickly by a claim that this is the reason behind the rampant murder or wanton PvP in the game.

I welcome everyone to post links to this thread in response to these claims moving forward.

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• If you fall unconscious in battle, a friend can apply an Epi-Pen and revive you.
  
• If you are low on blood, a friend can apply a blood transufion to completely heal you.
  
• If you are losing blood in battle, a friend can continue to fire on incoming zombies or players while you bandage - or, in groups of 3+, one player can receive a tranfusion from a second while a third continues firing.
  
• Looting towns can severely limit your visibility and awareness while you are among the tall buildings, walls and fences. Ask friends to take high ground near town and watch for approaching players with binoculars or rifle scopes.
  
• Looting building interiors severely limits your awareness and visibility. Ask a friend to remain outside and watch the door while you go in to loot. Best when combined with a third player on high ground near town.
  
• Managing your inventory or reading the map leaves you vulnerable; have a friend watch your back while you do so.
  
• Setting up a camp fire, harvesting wood and cooking takes time, exposes your position with light, sound and smoke, and can leave you vulnerable. Have friends cover you while you prepare dinner for the group.
  
• Weapons in the game have wide ranging effective ranges and varying degress of ammo rarity. Have some friends carry close range weapons (shotguns, SMGs), others carry medium range (AK, M16) and at least one with long range (DMR, CZ 550, etc.). This will make you an effective fighting force at a variety of ranges; alone with a shotgun, you are a sitting duck against anyone with a medium/long range weapon.
  
• Mix and match ammo types among your group - don't carry the same primary or secondary weapons; this will allow you to take maximum advantage of ammo you find. No more leaving precious rounds behind, someone in your group can use it.
  
• Inventory space is very limited, even with larger backpacks. Carrying sufficient food, water, ammunition and secondary items like smoke and frag grenades often leaves precious little room for medical supplies like blood bags and epi-pens. Appoint a member of your group as the medic and ask that he sacrifice firepower in exchange for inventory space dedicated to these precious supplies.
  
• Vehicle parts occupy a huge amount of inventory space, and repairing a vehicle leaves you very vulnerable to attack. Appoint multiple people to carry various parts, and establish a "pit crew" style repair strategy which allows you to quickly, efficiently and safely repair and refuel a vehicle in short order.
  
• When using a vehicle to travel, stopping to loot a building can leave your vehicle vulnerable to enemy fire or theft. Leave at least one friend behind to guard your wheels while you set off in search of loot.
  
• Should you fall in battle, ask your friends to guard the corpse and await your return - or, alternatively, loot the "good stuff" and set off to meet you when you spawn.
  
• Should you fall in battle, friends can use a vehicle to pick you up and drive you back to base - rearming and re-equipping yourself much more quickly after death than would otherwise be possible and getting you right back in the action.
  
• You don't always need a large group to loot a single town - you can increase loot efficiency by splitting up into teams and simultaneously looting different towns or hitting a different circuit of deer stands; return at the end of the mission and share/store all of the great loot you found!
  
• Finding rare vehicle parts like engines or main rotor assemblies is very difficult on your own. With a larger group hitting more industrial sites, you can gather the materials necessary to repair a vehicle fully in much less time than you would have alone.
  
• The appearance of a large group can ward off potential agressors. If you are alone and someone spies you from afar, they will likely track and potentially murder you. If they see you with 4+ friends, they might decide to stay quiet and leave you alone.
  
• Sheer firepower - no brainer. More guns means more bullets means less enemies to worry about.
  
• Throwing a frag grenade can often leave you vulnerable to arms fire. To maximize the effectiveness of grenades, have a friend lay down covering fire while you lob the grenade.
  
• Friends can provide distractions for other players. If you suspect a player might be present very near you, try and coax him into revealing his position by asking a friend to fire off some makarov rounds at a medium, safe distance. The player will likely think "That was far away, let me investigate" and you will get the drop on him.
  
• Friends can provide distractions for zombies. If you want to loot a town but are short on time due to approaching players or because you are low on ammo or food/water, have a friend draw the zombies away using gunfire or, ideally, a loud, fast vehicle navigating through town honking the horn and dragging all the zombies away like lemmings.
  
• Friends can play while you are not. This increases your loot, survival gear and equipment gathering potential. If you log out low on AKM ammo, you might be pleasantly surprised when you login the next day and your buddy says "Hey, I found some of that AKM ammo you were looking for!" With a common tent, you don't even have to find each other to exchange items.
  
• Friends are eyes in the back of your head. If you are held down in a structure with two, three or more entrances you can only cover one at a time on your own. Having additional eyes and hands to cover the other avenues of approach increases your survival chances exponentially.
  
• General equipment sharing is more important than you might think. "Opps, I just used my last bandage/food/water" goes from a potentially deadly situation to just a minor inconvenience when you have friends with you.
  
• Helicopter pilots need gunners in order to be maximally effective.
  
• You will probably find a natural division of varied skill levels among your group of friends - some people will be great snipers, others good with short range weapons. Some will know certain towns or terrain better than you do. Maybe some are great pilots for when you finally find that huey? You're probably not amazing at everything - so surrounding yourself with others is a great way to round out your available skill set.
  
• Just having people around to chat and joke with makes the game much more enjoyable, intense, emotional and sometimes heartbreaking. Alone, you will never save your friends life nor he yours. You will never accidentally shoot your friend in the back and have to apologize profusely while bandaging him. You won't make jokes to take the edge off a tense situation. Nobody will be around to say "Nice shot!" when you spike that 400m shot on the money. In short, as in real life, friends are nice to have around even if they're not currently doing anything to help you personally.
  

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[Napalm237 0]

Eloquently put, Many of these I do on a regular basis and could not even be bothered to reply to all the whiners on here.

Remember, Survivors AND Bandits need friends ... The one's who have them a usually the most successful.

[Cyanide (DayZ) 0]

Need friends.. :( lol

[imagelesskjc 35]

Is it alright if I copy/paste and include a link for future threads?

(Edit: Derp. Didn't read the last sentence. Thanks again! I was going to stay up late tonight making a list like you just did, but you beat me to the punch!)

[haviv[3rdid] 57]

Need friends.. :( lol

Yeah, bandits can form a brotherhood of evil and hunt down stray survivors.

[Slyguy65 499]

Should you fall in battle, ask your friends to guard the corpse and await your return - or, alternatively, loot the "good stuff" and set off to meet you when you spawn.

Ya that would be nice cept bodies despawn at random somtimes instant other times 10 minutes...which is still not enough time to get from coast to inland...

[rotekz 18]

I think the complaint is more that the risk involved in approaching random players to try to buddy up is so high as to not make it worth doing. There are no downsides to killing players so rather than risk losing all hard won gear players default to shooting on sight.

I'm sure everyone would like to be able to enjoy the benefits of co-operative play.

[esaciar 1]

@ ZedsDeadBaby

Excellent post. I, admittedly, am one of these "whiners" who feels we need a more structured system, but your eloquent post has really emphasised some facets of gameplay I had failed to consider thus far.

I would, however, like to see an ability to establish entrenched communities more readily in the game map.

Thanks for incredible post.

[septuscap 42]

I think the complaint is more that the risk involved in approaching random players to try to buddy up is so high as to not make it worth doing. There are no downsides to killing players so rather than risk losing all hard won gear players default to shooting on sight.

I'm sure everyone would like to be able to enjoy the benefits of co-operative play.

How about you get a group of 2-3 and THEN approach random solo players? He's probably a lot more likely to take the olive branch if the alternative is a 3v1.

And the co-op players get their dynamic interaction with randoms!

See that's not what this is about. This is about PvE players who want the game to enact their revenge for them. Players like that infect every game and try to push the game to punish PvP any way possible.

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I would' date=' however, like to see an ability to establish entrenched communities more readily in the game map.

[/quote']

Here are two ideas I think would add to the game: http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=10225&pid=93638#pid93638

[shadowvfx 3]

I think the complaint is more that the risk involved in approaching random players to try to buddy up is so high as to not make it worth doing. There are no downsides to killing players so rather than risk losing all hard won gear players default to shooting on sight.

I'm sure everyone would like to be able to enjoy the benefits of co-operative play.

How about you get a group of 2-3 and THEN approach random solo players? He's probably a lot more likely to take the olive branch if the alternative is a 3v1.

Sounds great, but if you don't have any IRL friends playing, making "friends" in this game is very difficult.

I have tried reaching out to 6+ people in the week I've been playing and guess what? I was shot by each and every one of them. If you can find an ally, that's fantastic. But for those like myself, this is a very difficult proposition. Also, half the things you list can probably be condensed into one line. Example: Epi-pen, Bandages, Bloodpacks, etc > Render First Aid. I appreciate you trying to counter all the "whiners" like myself out there, but your list looks like you intentionally broke it up to make it appear larger (and hence, showing more benefits of cooperation) than there really are in this game.

TL;DR

Teaming up is great. Getting a team of strangers to cooperate together without dying in the process is easier said than done.

[Sarcasmo 2]

How exactly will epinephrine help when I've been shot?

[Cooper42 0]

The issue is not "there are no inceb tives to cooperate". the issues is that "there are no incnetives to cooperate with people you do not know and trust outside of the game". Let's apply your "list of cooperation" to possible stranger with stranger grouoings:

[*] If you fall unconscious in battle' date=' a friend can apply an Epi-Pen and revive you.[/quote']

Or they could just shoot you in the face and take your beans.

[*] If you are low on blood, a friend can apply a blood transufion to completely heal you.

If they don't shoot you in the face and take your beans first

[*] If you are losing blood in battle, a friend can continue to fire on incoming zombies or players while you bandage - or, in groups of 3+, one player can receive a tranfusion from a second while a third continues firing.

As long as, once the zombies are dead, they don;t then shoot you in the face and take your beans.

[*] Looting towns can severely limit your visibility and awareness while you are among the tall buildings, walls and fences. Ask friends to take high ground near town and watch for approaching players with binoculars or rifle scopes.

As long as they don't wait until you've looted the town and are walking back up the hill then shoot you in the face from your vantage point and take your newly acquired beans.

[*] Looting building interiors severely limits your awareness and visibility. Ask a friend to remain outside and watch the door while you go in to loot. Best when combined with a third player on high ground near town.

See above

[*] Managing your inventory or reading the map leaves you vulnerable; have a friend watch your back while you do so.

Unless you have beans in your inventory, then they will wait for you to open it and not be looking, shoot you in the face and take your beans.

[*] Setting up a camp fire, harvesting wood and cooking takes time, exposes your position with light, sound and smoke, and can leave you vulnerable. Have friends cover you while you prepare dinner for the group.

Who will, when the fire is out, shoot you in the face and take your cooked meat. And your beans.

[*] Weapons in the game have wide ranging effective ranges and varying degress of ammo rarity. Have some friends carry close range weapons (shotguns, SMGs), others carry medium range (AK, M16) and at least one with long range (DMR, CZ 550, etc.). This will make you an effective fighting force at a variety of ranges; alone with a shotgun, you are a sitting duck against anyone with a medium/long range weapon.

Shotguns are especially good if you group up with strangers. Makes shooting them in the face and taking their beans very easy.

[*] Mix and match ammo types among your group - don't carry the same primary or secondary weapons; this will allow you to take maximum advantage of ammo you find. No more leaving precious rounds behind, someone in your group can use it.

Or, shoot them in the face, take their weapon and ammo as a backup to yours in case you run out. And beans, in case you run out of beans.

[*] Inventory space is very limited, even with larger backpacks. Carrying sufficient food, water, ammunition and secondary items like smoke and frag grenades often leaves precious little room for medical supplies like blood bags and epi-pens. Appoint a member of your group as the medic and ask that he sacrifice firepower in exchange for inventory space dedicated to these precious supplies.

That guy without fire power is a prime target for face shooting and bean stealing.

[*] Vehicle parts occupy a huge amount of inventory space, and repairing a vehicle leaves you very vulnerable to attack. Appoint multiple people to carry various parts, and establish a "pit crew" style repair strategy which allows you to quickly, efficiently and safely repair and refuel a vehicle in short order.

The shoot the pit crew in the face, put their beans in the car trunk.

[*] When using a vehicle to travel, stopping to loot a building can leave your vehicle vulnerable to enemy fire or theft. Leave at least one friend behind to guard your wheels while you set off in search of loot.

On the way back tot he car, sneak up on him and shoot him in the face. Stash beans as per above.

[*] Should you fall in battle, ask your friends to guard the corpse and await your return - or, alternatively, loot the "good stuff" and set off to meet you when you spawn.

They'll have taken your beans and run away by then.

[*] Should you fall in battle, friends can use a vehicle to pick you up and drive you back to base - rearming and re-equipping yourself much more quickly after death than would otherwise be possible and getting you right back in the action.

Shoot them all in the face: Whole base of tents to yourself. Fill tents with beans.

[*] You don't always need a large group to loot a single town - you can increase loot efficiency by splitting up into teams and simultaneously looting different towns or hitting a different circuit of deer stands; return at the end of the mission and share/store all of the great loot you found!

When meeting back, more faces to shoot, more places looted. Variety of beans from different towns!

[*] Finding rare vehicle parts like engines or main rotor assemblies is very difficult on your own. With a larger group hitting more industrial sites, you can gather the materials necessary to repair a vehicle fully in much less time than you would have alone.

Then shoot them in the face. Your OWN helicopter FULL OF BEANS

[*] The appearance of a large group can ward off potential agressors. If you are alone and someone spies you from afar, they will likely track and potentially murder you. If they see you with 4+ friends, they might decide to stay quiet and leave you alone.

Etc...

Referring back tot he original statement.

Therev are MANY reasons to cooperate WITH OOG FRIENDS in DayZ

There are NO reasons the cooperate with STRANGERS in DayZ. This is what is most often meant by "there is no reason to cooperate".

Stranger meets stranger. The only question: Who gets the beans?

[5P4RK4 (DayZ) 50]

Don't talk to strangers, they are dangerous.

[joikd 25]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Not trusting family or close friends in a SHTF situation such as DayZ is completely authentic. Google "Selco" and "Balkan" and read about a year long real-life SHTF scenario--trusting strangers is just not a good idea.

[moxrox 5]

One of the best thread in this forum, wished people would know about this earlier so not everybody was forced into this deathmatch gameplay because some nubs told many that you should trust nobody and kill on sight....

[septuscap 42]

How exactly will epinephrine help when I've been shot?

If you've ever fallen over from a wound and seen the hourglass ticking down' date=' the epi-pen jolts you back to life. Otherwise you're basically just forced to sit there comatose and hope you don't get shot again.

[hr']

There are NO reasons the cooperate with STRANGERS in DayZ. This is what is most often meant by "there is no reason to cooperate".

Grouping with strangers carries the risk of betrayal. Thanks Captain Obvious.

Join a survivor clan? Plenty recruiting.

Group with ONE player you trust and then try and group with a stranger so backstabbing you means he'll be shot by your friend?

This isn't rocket science. Stop running into zombie infested cities yelling "ANY FRIENDLIES IN CHERNO???"

[rotekz 18]

I think the complaint is more that the risk involved in approaching random players to try to buddy up is so high as to not make it worth doing. There are no downsides to killing players so rather than risk losing all hard won gear players default to shooting on sight.

I'm sure everyone would like to be able to enjoy the benefits of co-operative play.

How about you get a group of 2-3 and THEN approach random solo players? He's probably a lot more likely to take the olive branch if the alternative is a 3v1.

Sounds great' date=' but if you don't have any IRL friends playing, making "friends" in this game is very difficult.[/quote'] Exactly. This is my situation. No IRL friends as yet playing DayZ. There is no way to approach randoms without massive risk. There are plenty of full-time Bandits that live for suckering people with fake offers of friendship. Just check this guy out for a great example....

[kaffaljidhma 1]

Eventually this will become a complete clan game with 2 or 3 clans on each server edging out non-associated players by teamwork advantage. At which point it becomes an ARMA mission with BLUFOR, OPFOR, and Independent sides.

[rotekz 18]

LOL - what total guff!

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

There are NO reasons the cooperate with STRANGERS in DayZ. This is what is most often meant by "there is no reason to cooperate".

Okay' date=' well, then I don't know what to say or what you expect. People don't tend to cooperate with strangers in REAL LIFE I don't know why you would ever think they would do so in DayZ when the world has gone to complete and utter shit. The entire reason the word "stranger" exists is to set them apart from people with whom you have established a trust. It's up to you to figure out how to bridge that gap and establish that initial trust so that you can access all the benefits I listed above.

If you're not willing to take that step and figure out that problem, then I do politely suggest you play a game which has built-in forced mechanics to tell you who to trust like "Oh, people with red names are nasty and people with green names are friendly" but that game is not DayZ nor should it ever be. Read what rocket has said - it's these social problems and dilemmas, and watching people try to solve them, that lie at the heart of the DayZ experience. It perfectly mirrors the zed fiction upon which the game draws influence - just look at [i']The Walking Dead. People who knew each other prior to the zeds, even partners, friends and family find their trust in each other put to the test when the world falls apart.

Personally, I think it's incredibly accurate. If anything like DayZ ever happened, how many people would YOU trust "on sight?" I can list maybe 8 - son, daughter, wife, father, mother, 2 brothers and 1 true friend. The rest of them, even most members of my non-immediate family? Stay away from my beans or else.

[selquest@gmail.com 0]

Exactly. And to the "until they shoot me and take my beans" folks, that's the point. That's part of the risk. The paranoia... the terror.

This is a survival game, and the psychology that goes into meeting other survivors is frankly amazing... there are clear benefits to shooting first, especially because of the risk that HE might shoot first. But there are terrific advantages to having a teammate. All those things that the OP listed, and that list will hopefully continue to grow. I'd love to see a few more things make that list, and I hope that continued development introduces even more game elements that require cooperation.

In the meantime, there are certainly clear advantages already....and you can generally convince others of them, you just have to be careful. Direct communication channel is excellent for this - sneak up, approach from a position of control. Talk it out, see if you think you can trust him... all while making it very clear that he doesn't turn around until you say so. If you're relatively equally equipped, you probably don't have much actual motivation to kill each other aside from fear that you will kill each other. If you can establish that, the teamwork is usually pretty straightforward, even if actual "trust" is still a ways off.

It's all about measuring risk versus reward when it comes to meeting up with others... it's not pure PvP, and it's not pure PvE... it's survival, cooperative, competitive, and everything in between. And that's why I enjoy it so much.

[shadowvfx 3]

Cooper's awesome response...

That made me lol so hard. I think this image depicts the opinions of many in Day Z.

[Kolchak (DayZ) 5]

Okay' date=' well, then I don't know what to say or what you expect. People don't tend to cooperate with strangers in REAL LIFE I don't know why you would ever think they would do so in DayZ when the world has gone to complete and utter shit. The entire reason the word "stranger" exists is to set them apart from people with whom you have established a trust. It's up to you to figure out how to bridge that gap and establish that initial trust so that you can access all the benefits I listed above.[/quote']

No, not even then. Your entire list of benefits assumes that the people you bring into the game are VERY good at it. I've tried bringing my friends into this game, and some of them keep dying from stupidity or other handicaps, even when I'm there telling them what not to do. We've got the guy who has metallica blaring in the background so he can't hear them creeping up on him. We've got the stoner who can't stop hitting his bong long enough to scope the scene out before he starts running in. We've got the guy with some kind of eye damage he picked up while he was deployed so his vision's already a little blurry. Not one of them can last more than an hour without me there to guide them. This is who you're telling me is going to enable me the benefits of your magical list, and I still assume they're miles better at this than the crazy bastards sprinting up and down the coast. It's not up to us to bridge that gap when we can already see it's not even worth the effort right now.

Read what rocket has said - it's these social problems and dilemmas' date=' and watching people try to solve them, that lie at the heart of the DayZ experience. It perfectly mirrors the zed fiction upon which the game draws influence - just look at [i']The Walking Dead. People who knew each other prior to the zeds, even partners, friends and family find their trust in each other put to the test when the world falls apart.

This is all wishful thinking. I understand it, the stories of on the fly cooperation, avoiding bandits, and tense standoffs that were thrown around on Kotaku, videos on youtube, that's what got me into it. That's what I was hoping to see. But with the addition of the masses of typical gamers that flocked here, and the removal of the one thing that might have dissuaded rampant PKing, the way these "social dilemmas and problems" are being solved is typically rather abrupt and involves a singular exchange of ammo and blood. All that potential wonderful human drama just gets splattered across the floor and walls. Killing someone on here is not interesting, nor does it weigh on your conscience, it's instant gratification, and moreso, not only is it predictable, it makes the game predictable. How predictable is it? What's the first thing someone says when someone comes on the forums complaining that they got killed in Cherno/Elektro/NW Airfield? "If you go there you're going to get killed." And that's one of the big reasons some people are getting annoyed, this game is supposed to be about unpredictability, you're supposed to be tense and scared. I never am in Cherno or Electro, or the NW airfield, I'm just waiting for the gunshots cause I know they're coming. I go in prepared for and expecting my own death, and am sometimes pleasantly surprised that no one noticed me before I got out.

Personally' date=' I think it's incredibly accurate. If anything like DayZ ever happened, how many people would YOU trust "on sight?" I can list maybe 8 - son, daughter, wife, father, mother, 2 brothers and 1 true friend. The rest of them, even most members of my non-immediate family? Stay away from my beans or else.

[/quote']

Realism's not the be-all end-all of this mod, just see my sig. I can make just as big a list as yours of unrealistic features, but I understand the reasoning for them. The line between realism and tedium is razor thin, and concessions have to be made so you don't stray into tedium. Yet when it comes to making it so that cooperation is inherently rewarded like shooting someone is, there's an army of people screaming to shoot it down. And just to illustrate how much you don't think like most people, your list of people to trust during an apocalypse includes alot of your family, mine would include only one member of my family, because realistically, the rest would never survive the first 48 hours and/or get everyone they're with killed.

This topic has alot of hopefulness, if I were to see all that cool stuff in the first post in action, I'd probably be astonished, maybe even tear up, cause that would be beautiful, and because I know I'd probably never see it happen again. Hell, it reads like a bullet point list for the trailer of a big budget war movie, all it needs is a speech about brotherhood and duty. But as nice as it is, it's completely unrealistic for most people. Half of it is all these situations that hardly ever happen, and the other half would require that you're part of the biggest group on the server and you're essentially running the place. Combat that lasts long enough that applying an epi pen is not a complete waste? The only time I've ever killed someone, it took less than a second for it to be over, he was dead before he could pass out. The one time I've been killed by another player, about 3 seconds, had just enough time to realize he wasn't the friend I was trying to meet with. The dozens of other times I was fired upon by other survivors, I either escaped or scared them off with a smoke grenade/regular grenade within 10 seconds. Flying around in a chopper? I've seen 3 working choppers in the month I've been playing, one of them was falling from the sky onto elektro moments after it was completed. Hate to break it to you, but you're seeing this game through rose colored glasses, you're the new guy that the huge veteran squad took under their wing, that's a level of high quality support most people will never have. It's like those commercials on TV where they show sad puppies and you're like that rich person who comes on telling you how many cents a day it takes to save their lives, and how it's our responsibility to save them. Sorry dude, almost all the puppies die, and they're just going to keep dying, cause it truly isn't our responsibility. If we want to keep them from dying we have to take 'kill puppies' off the To-Do list, and give them an inherent reason to keep them alive. Until then the status remains quo, communication and cooperation will still be almost nonexistent.

[rickenbacker 190]

I think the complaint is more that the risk involved in approaching random players to try to buddy up is so high as to not make it worth doing. There are no downsides to killing players so rather than risk losing all hard won gear players default to shooting on sight.

I'm sure everyone would like to be able to enjoy the benefits of co-operative play.

How about you get a group of 2-3 and THEN approach random solo players? He's probably a lot more likely to take the olive branch if the alternative is a 3v1.

Sounds great' date=' but if you don't have any IRL friends playing, making "friends" in this game is very difficult.

I have tried reaching out to 6+ people in the week I've been playing and guess what? I was shot by each and every one of them. If you can find an ally, that's fantastic. But for those like myself, this is a very difficult proposition. Also, half the things you list can probably be condensed into one line. Example: Epi-pen, Bandages, Bloodpacks, etc > Render First Aid. I appreciate you trying to counter all the "whiners" like myself out there, but your list looks like you intentionally broke it up to make it appear larger (and hence, showing more benefits of cooperation) than there really are in this game.

TL;DR

Teaming up is great. Getting a team of strangers to cooperate together without dying in the process is easier said than done.

[/quote']

I agree with all of this. There's no advantage to NOT shooting other players, so everyone plays the game like CoD and shoot on sight. I always try to talk to players near me, tell them I won't shoot, ask if they need help etc. The results the first few weeks of alpha: some really nice groups helping each other out. The results the last two weeks: every single person, without exception, just immediately shot me.

---

This is all wishful thinking. I understand it' date=' the stories of on the fly cooperation, avoiding bandits, and tense standoffs that were thrown around on Kotaku, videos on youtube, that's what got me into it. That's what I was hoping to see.

[/quote']

Me too, I read the stories, played a friendly loner and had a great time for about a week. But you'll notice that all those stories are, without exception, from before the unwashed CoD masses stormed in and started shooting everything that moves.

[boogiemanfl 0]

True as those reasons may be, it's not helping. Everyone is still KoS.