The flies/crows on very low humanity discussion

[Johnny5vsZombie 0]

@Chrono

that's funny because i think you completely miss the point.

stay alive at any cost. if you die it's your fault. this is how the world would work in this situation. life would be cheap. all life except for yours and the very small circle of people you have chosen to surround yourself with.

---

living in a post apocolyptic waste land is dangerous business and i don't need to have my hand held becuase i can't keep my own ass alive.

Living...? You mean: respawning.

This is the argument that none of the "living in an apocalypse is dangerous" professors didn't mention in their comments.

Ppl are playing this like CoD because they can respawn' date=' if it was like the real life, 99.9999999999% of those forum Rambos wannabe would have been hiding under a rock, dying by their own fear, and not camping on a hill shooting at strangers with a sniper rifle while eating beans.

Give to us a MINIMUM 24 hours respawn time and let's see what happens... you don't like the idea? Don't you? Indeed.. this is a game... That's why i say: realistic my ass!

[/quote']

thanks for adding relevent and well thought arguments to the discussion.

[ryeezy 29]

I thought the idea of having a crow following you was incredibly badass. I think sometimes we just need to say fuck realism and just have some fun and original ideas.

[Crayfish (DayZ) 0]

The flies/crows thing was an interesting idea but as has been discussed, doesn't really suit the ambience of the game. There are two steps to fixing the humanity system:

1. Create the right balance for losing (and gaining) humanity.

2. Be able to use humanity as a tool for identifying trustworthy players.

For the first step the following alterations should be made:

1.1. Self defence should not lower humanity. The only kills that count as murders are ones where the victim has not fired their weapon in the past 30 seconds.

Identifying an aggressor is almost impossible and very easy to exploit. The rules for determining whether one person has fired upon another may seem obvious to us but are incredibly vague to a computer. This solution only allows a player to shoot another player without losing humanity if that player has recently fired their weapon. It can be gamed (by shooting a player when they are engaged in combat against zombies for example) but does protect peaceful players for 90% of the time. It also catches the majority of malicious sniper attacks.

1.2. Shooting a player that is unarmed or has their weapon holstered would cause the player to lose double humanity.

1.3. The only way to gain humanity should be time. For every day that the player plays the game and does not kill anyone, one murder's worth of humanity is restored.

Every other way of regaining humanity would be exploited or gamed. In this system the humanity is gained the first time the player connects to a session on a day subsequent to the day when he murdered no other players.

The second part of the humanity system is where this post gets back a bit more to the original topic. How do we use humanity to assist players that want to play more peacefully?

The first question to ask is what are we trying to simulate? My feeling is that what we are simulating is the "hunch" we have about other people from their body language. In order to do this we can implement the following changes:

2.1. Subtle skin change for facial expression. Players with low humanity should have a permanent sneer. Not useful for long range encounters but definitely evident when grouping.

2.2. Text chat appears in a slightly different colour relative to their humanity level. This simulates our ability to judge someone from their manner of speaking.

2.3 Shooting a murderer should not affect a player's own humanity. This is fairly obvious and has already been implemented.

Finally I do think as a quick fix for identifying bandits. If we're keeping the global "x has died" messages, it would be good to try out allowing all players to see who they were killed by. That would give more peaceful player a much better idea of who the killers on the map are and allow for revenge and vigil-ante behaviour.

[chronologger 0]

When the bandit skins were enabled I remember teaming up with people on the fly all the time' date=' groups formed IN-GAME because there was a way to determine who the PKers are, survivor cooperation had that emergent element to it and that's been gone for the last few patches and I've missed it.[/quote']

I'm sorry but no. The bandit skin was never a way to determine who was a PK'er. I got killed by survivors WAY more times than bandits when I joined because people would shoot people just because they wanted to anyway.

Surely you must know how easily you could obtain the bandit skin by accident don't you? Say a player starts shooting at you and you shoot back and kill him and BAM.. you're now a bandit and a filthy PK'er. The bandit skin was stupid, you couldn't trust anyone blindly before and you can't trust anyone blindly now.

See that's the difference now, the crows don't come following you the instant you get into negative humanity, the crows are for PKers who have a considerably low humanity who have killed players repeatedly.

Everybody wins with this solution, survivors get a way to determine if there is a mass murderer nearby, bandits still win because if they keep their humanity low enough or go about doing nice deeds in between their PKing they can keep the crows at bay. The only people who are getting a TINY little punishment (that isn't even very specific or a sound way to determine of there is a bandit nearby because of randomly spawning flocks of birds) are the people who literally just go around killing other players ALL DAY.

[partizanas 0]

My take on pk issue:

If our real world would consist of 5 differently looking clones, there would be a lot of killings, cuz there would not be an easy way of puzzle out witch one is the killer.

Skins. Arma has a lot of skins. Putting only half of them into the game, and letting players find their unique look (pilot, pop, akula, takistanian or specnaz...) and be identified from distance encourages them to pay attention to their reputation. This imho would encourage to not compromise your self by killing another player, becouse he and/or others may remember how you look. Vice versa with helping people.

Of course killers will change their skins, but thats the inevitable.

But experience tells that gamers value and attach to their ingame looks, and dont want to loose it.

Also encourages not to change servers that often.

[chronologger 0]

@Chrono

life would be cheap. all life except for yours and the very small circle of people you have chosen to surround yourself with.

See that's the thing, you can't even begin to surround yourself with a small trusted group of friends because there is no way to initiate those bonds to begin with. People will shoot on sight far more often than I think they realistically would, people are exploiting the fact that this game simply can't simulate the effects of going fucking insane with the guilt of killing scores of other people for your own benefit. So some other alternative game mechanic should be implemented to dissuade people from killing each other willy nilly.

[rocket 16567]

So much don't know where to start.

1. ArmA2 skins can't carry backpacks. Only a selection (no all) of PMC, BAF, and ArmA2 OA. That is why I have so few skins in the mod.

2. Most of the suggestions are major engine changes. They're not even minor engine changes, let alone changes I can implement in the mod. Cool ideas for any possible future game, but not something I can do now.

[rhennigan 2]

In reality, the human brain is a supercomputer when it comes to facial recognition and inferring intent from subtle cues like body language, etc. This is however, very difficult to implement in-game (I am speculating). Perhaps a similar effect could be achieved by modifying the player's appearance in a VERY subtle way. Perhaps a small graphical effect that creates a slight dark aura around characters with low humanity that would be difficult to detect unless very close and in well-lit areas.

[Johnny5vsZombie 0]

@Chrono

life would be cheap. all life except for yours and the very small circle of people you have chosen to surround yourself with.

See that's the thing' date=' you can't even begin to surround yourself with a small trusted group of friends because there is no way to initiate those bonds to begin with. People will shoot on sight far more often than I think they realistically would, people are exploiting the fact that this game simply can't simulate the effects of going fucking insane with the guilt of killing scores of other people for your own benefit. So some other alternative game mechanic should be implemented to dissuade people from killing each other willy nilly.

[/quote']

that's why adding someone to your circle should be the biggest deal in the game. it should be a huge decision...because you simply do not know.

[thygrrr 1]

I think crows would have been perfect, but I hate snipers so I am biased.

[EzE (DayZ) 0]

Kind of a long shot and not sure how it could be implemented but one suggestion I heard a while ago on here could be pretty cool.

Players with low humanity could start to see things and hallucinate. Maybe see a player model run in their field of view every once in a while or here zombie moans coming from behind them when nobody is really there. Hell maybe make one or two zombies actually spawn near them (if possible, not sure) even if they are in the middle of the woods by themselves (Karma is a bitch :P)

And maybe actually add some whiskey in those bottles to help fend off these mental issues for a brief period of time. Adds some cool features and I dont think it really takes anything away from the game. But then again, im no game developer and have no clue how hard it would be to implement

[chronologger 0]

So much don't know where to start.

1. ArmA2 skins can't carry backpacks. Only a selection (no all) of PMC' date=' BAF, and ArmA2 OA. That is why I have so few skins in the mod.

2. Most of the suggestions are major engine changes. They're not even minor engine changes, let alone changes I can implement in the mod. Cool ideas for any possible future game, but not something I can do now.

[/quote']

Somebody may have already asked you, but since you're here I might as well...

Regarding the skins, any chance of implementing the skins from the Army of the Czech Republic DLC? I think some of these would fit pretty well with the Chernarus landscape and I assume that they will be able to use the backpacks, correct?

[attachment=796]

[ryeezy 29]

I always thought it would be nice if you could do things to get your humanity above the default (bandage players, give blood etc) and get some sort of skin to show you are helpful but youd lose it if you started killing fools.

[brisos 1]

Please listen to what people have suggested time and time again - Give players an incentive to be good' date=' do not punish them for being bad.

[/quote']

Yes, please.

[gray1107 (DayZ) 0]

...Most of the suggestions are major engine changes. They're not even minor engine changes' date=' let alone changes I can implement in the mod. Cool ideas for any possible future game, but not something I can do now.

[/quote']

Okay so, it's clearly impossible to have a realistic system in game which is why we've been trying skins/crows/flies. Real world judging a persons character is based on innumerable variables and subconscious mechanisms.

:idea: Why not just publish players current humanity (in game or out) and meta-game it?

Things that lower humanity: Killing players that haven't shot you.

Things that raise humanity: Time since last player kill, use of blood bags, killing zeds that have aggro'd a player, trading gear etc.

[Johnny5vsZombie 0]

Please listen to what people have suggested time and time again - Give players an incentive to be good' date=' do not punish them for being bad.

[/quote']

Yes, please.

[chronologger 0]

that's why adding someone to your circle should be the biggest deal in the game. it should be a huge decision...because you simply do not know.

You completely avoided my point about how there should be at least SOME kind of negative side-affect to killing people regularly, that's what's important here, that's what this discussion is about.

[EzE (DayZ) 0]

Oh yeah, and another thing that hallucinations might add. If a sneaky bandit somehow dupes you into trusting him, with plans on off-ing you a little later, these hallucinations could give the player some insight on if he is a bandit or not. He might start shooting at thin air thinking another player or zombie is around or ask "did you hear that zombie" when in fact, there is no zomie around at all.

And maybe make the whiskey have some adverse affects on players with regular humanity, like the blurred vision you get when you are low on blood, but a bandit will want to find as much whiskey as possible to fend off his mental issues. So if you two are looting and he picks up the whiskey, he just might be a crazy bandit lol. (Im bored at work and these are just some brainstorms :p)

[Johnny5vsZombie 0]

that's why adding someone to your circle should be the biggest deal in the game. it should be a huge decision...because you simply do not know.

You completely avoided my point about how there should be at least SOME kind of negative side-affect to killing people regularly' date=' that's what's important here, that's what this discussion is about.

[/quote']

there should be no consequences for being a bandit only advantages to co-operative and survival type game play. i didn't avoid your comment i simply disagree with it completely.

[bas_tera@hotmail.com 3]

So much don't know where to start.

1. ArmA2 skins can't carry backpacks. Only a selection (no all) of PMC' date=' BAF, and ArmA2 OA. That is why I have so few skins in the mod.

2. Most of the suggestions are major engine changes. They're not even minor engine changes, let alone changes I can implement in the mod. Cool ideas for any possible future game, but not something I can do now.

[/quote']

True, but the ACE 2 mod has somehow enabled all the skins to use backpacks...

Maybe you can contact those lovely fellahs to see how they did it?

Or maybe use their code?

[chronologger 0]

Oh yeah' date=' and another thing that hallucinations might add. If a sneaky bandit somehow dupes you into trusting him, with plans on off-ing you a little later, these hallucinations could give the player some insight on if he is a bandit or not. He might start shooting at thin air thinking another player or zombie is around or ask "did you hear that zombie" when in fact, there is no zomie around at all.

And maybe make the whiskey have some adverse affects on players with regular humanity, like the blurred vision you get when you are low on blood, but a bandit will want to find as much whiskey as possible to fend off his mental issues. So if you two are looting and he picks up the whiskey, he just might be a crazy bandit lol. (Im bored at work and these are just some brainstorms :p)

[/quote']

Actually, some of this doesn't sound like a bad idea, I think visual hallucinations would be a little bit much to implement, but maybe random audio and maybe some kind of PTSD simulation (with all due respect to those who suffer PTSD). There are some symptoms that could fit in the game, here are some that I think could be implemented.

Irritability or outbursts of anger (Player character mutters/screams in anger occasionally)

Feelings of intense distress when reminded of the trauma (Random panic attacks?)

Difficulty concentrating (Reduced accuracy? Well, maybe that's a little too harsh)

Substance abuse (Alcohol dependence?)

That's a pretty nice idea imo EzE

[scoob (DayZ) 0]

Heres a suggestion just remove scoped weapons from the game,how realistic is it that every third farmer keeps a sniper rifle in his barn.

Heres a tip to those people who love to snipe from 1000 yards grow some and go and shoot someone face to face,you never know you might become a man one day.

Sniping is for those who start to get the shakes when they get within 100 yards of a survivor.;)

[Johnny5vsZombie 0]

Heres a suggestion just remove scoped weapons from the game' date='how realistic is it that every third farmer keeps a sniper rifle in his barn.

Heres a tip to those people who love to snipe from 1000 yards grow some and go and shoot someone face to face,you never know you might become a man one day.

Sniping is for those who start to get the shakes when they get within 100 yards of a survivor.;)

[/quote']

nah i think scoped weapons add a good element to a game. the necessity of running through open fields has to be weighed very heavily.

[f3n1xesp 0]

OK, let me start by saying i'm sorry. 95% of the time, i read the full thread before posting, and i hate people who answers the OP without even reading what the other posters wrote after him, but this time i am myself one of those. And it's because i read this:

- It puts bandits at a huge disadvantage. Being a sniper myself who has negative humanity (Hard not to have it these days with everyone shooting first) having crows fly above me while I am prone in a bush somewhere would completely destroy the experience for me.

So, you are against something that destroys the experience for you... What about the experiences YOU have destroyed with your game style? I'm not against PvP, even if i try to avoid other players, i have no complaint if someone kills me to loot my stuff, this is game the game is about, and it would be extremely boring without human players making it harder; but you sniper bandits kill survivors just for the lulz. You, camping on your bush, shooting survivors 800 m away just because you can, ruining your victim's experience, destroying all the time he had invested in gathering all the loot he had on him, and most of the time you won't even loot him because it's too risky.

You dare to complain about something "destroying your experience"? You should shut up and just thank rocket for eliminating your well deserved bandit skin, making your life easier.

Oh, and before all the flame starts on me, i've only been killed by a bandit once, and my loot wasn't that good, so i didn't care much, so you can save all the "butthurt whine" posts.

[chronologger 0]

there should be no consequences for being a bandit only advantages to co-operative and survival type game play. i didn't avoid your comment i simply disagree with it completely.

But this mechanic IS an incentive to play as a survivor. That advantage being you wont have to worry about a flock of birds following you everywhere you go. It's not that much to ask is it? Considering the advantage of being a bandit is that you never have to worry about how you pick your targets.