Not a care-bear thread, but asking for a solution

[Jurkey 7]

The usual topic - deathmatching in DayZ. Let me tell you guys a bit about myself, before you start making assumptions:

I've played DayZ since June/July, and I've experienced many sides of it. I've played alone, with friends, as bandit, as hero - I've travelled by foot, repaired vehicles, played with clans and all that jazz. Also, I've seen the shit storm, and the community divide between the bandit/survivor play-style - the never-ending debate.

First off, I sort of liked the deathmatch psychology. Always be on your toes, don't mess up, and living in a lawless post-apocalyptic world (sort of). I've been a huge fan of the newer Fallout games for a couple of years, and the whole post-apocalyptic universe is very interesting to me. But after having played DayZ for a couple of months, I sort of got tired of it. I don't want to be preaching, and pointing fingers at anyone - I'm part of the issue myself. I've been a bandit for the most part, and shot people at sight - I've hunted down people, and I've camped Elektro's fire department with my CZ and a ghille suit.

Banditry is quick and efficent. There are basically no down-sides to it, and a small risk if you have a good weapon. I remember when everyone would run around with makarovs, and I'd often not shoot people, because the odds for actually killing -anything- were too low.

When I spawn, I'll head to Cherno or Elektro, and just run all the way through, find the fire station, acquire a weapon, and then start from there.

If you get shot, fine, you'll just rinse and repeat.

If you find a lone survivor, you'll take him out and grab his gear. He might have some good equipment, so you'll take it and continue on your small journey.

That's the mentality. Why you ask? Because it's the "safest". You eliminate a threat, and you put yourself at advantage. Sure, you might get shot - but at least you tried, and odds are that if you tried to call "friendly", you'd get shot before even putting up a fight.

I don't know how to solve this issue - and that's why I'm asking the community, what should we do?

The current problem is, that this is sort of a paradox. If you increase the difficulty to this game, it will just give people a tendency to shoot people, to get their hard-earned gear. If you know how hard it is, to obtain X item, why go out and find it yourself when you can just pop an unaware survivor for it?

Decreasing gun spawns will probably have the same effect.

Please, provide some constructive critism. Think through your answer, and what we should do. What will give people more of a "friendly" over-all mentality? At the moment, 90% of people KoS - and if they aren't pulling the trigger, you might be.

[Dankine 377]

I don't think this is a problem.

[Jurkey 7]

Could you be more constructive in your post? Reason?

[Dankine 377]

I honestly don't see the downside to there being a shoot on sight mentality. I stand to lose the most by trusting people I don't know. I stand to gain the most, or remain the same, by shooting people on sight.

[Jurkey 7]

The reason why I think it's a problem, is because (for me atleast) it ruins a lot of potential fun. Teaming up with random people and such, is always intriguing, but at the moment, the game discourages it. I know it's more "efficient" to be a bandit, but is it also the most fun one?

[ZomboWTF 527]

well, people are still to paranoid from the great hype-wave of childish gamers that thought dayZ would be a deathmatch game

the only solution is, that someone starts calling out "friendly" no matter how often he dies doing that

because right now, as your post states, you are just helping "deathmatching" becoming more and more common

[Dankine 377]

The game doesn't discourage it at all. It is a sandbox, people play how they like. If you want to group up with people, go ahead, but don't frame is as a problem when people don't want to group up with you and you die as a result.

[Jurkey 7]

Well, in my opinion, it's a problem. I know it's a sandbox, and that people can do whatever they want - but it's a lot of potential that's "lost".

[Professional N00b 347]

There's risk and reward to both killing on sight as well as trying to be friendly.

Killing on sight is generally safer and can net you some decent gear. Downside is you could just as easily end up being the one killed. Had several situations where someone else opened up on me but because of their horrible aim plus their bad gun, I managed to kill them instead.

Trying to befriend someone is even riskier though because, while there are exceptions like above, usually the one who fires first will win. Thus if you stop and try to talk nice, they are likely to just shoot you rather than try to trust you and end up having you shoot them instead. So the initial risk is much higher, especially on public servers where people don't know each other.

However, if you do manage to make a friend in the game then you now have another man on your team which is far more valuable (usually) than just the gear alone. Not to mention you guys may decide to work together in the future even after you die, thus creating something useful that persists through your character's death.

Over all it's just a risk versus reward situation along with a playstyle choice. Obviously it is much harder for a lone wolf and tends to be better to just KoS instead, but you never know.

A good example was when me and two other friends were looting Zub Castle and some poor guy drove up in a UAZ. We heard him coming, hid, and a few minutes later he managed to spot one of us while he tried to loot the castle. Instead of shooting (which would have instantly ended up in him getting shot from three heavily armed people) he called friendly and we all replied in kind. Eventually he gave us a ride in his UAZ and even decided to let us have it since we could use it more than he could. No one fired a shot.

Edited October 1, 2012 by Professional N00b

[tommes 331]

Rocket already knows the solution. Increase incentive to cooperate by adding the need for other people's capabilities.

Little story here to elaborate.

Last weekend I roamed Lingor alone an my inital goal was to find some survivors with worthy loot and kill them. Got badly screwed up in the process. Tried to find animals to buff up health but those where nowhere to be found. Ate tons of beans and pasta to get up to like 5000 blood when some guy attacks me with his glock from right behind me. Managed to kill him but was left with less than 1000 blood. Still no animals in sight. Found bloodbags. As you know pretty much useless alone. So I had to find another survivor, keep him alive and have him to be so nice to give me a transfusion. That's a strong incentive.

I managed to find such a noble individual. Turned out he desperately needed blood himself. So we helped each other out and both stayed decent enough to not shoot the other in the back at first chance.

That's positive incentive in opposite of punishment for misbehaviour. It's a good principle.

[Skin69niks 72]

Predation...is it a problem? As an apex predator myself I would have to say no, Darwin I think would agree with me. To those of you that have been indoctrinated with the ideology that all things should be equal and that anything less than a tie in every endeavor is somehow inherently evil, I say you're demonstrably ill in the head. Scenario: you find yourself in an environment where 99% of the population has been stricken by some unknown disease, turning them into zombies. There are no more semi's running food to the grocery store and the infrastructure of the nation including all the "creature comforts" are down. No food no power no TV no nothing...you have a flashlight a bandaid and some tylenol. Now, you hero's out there talking about rebuilding civilization I applaud your sentiment, I however am going into self preservation mode quick fast and in a fkn HURRY!! FIRST I am securing the basics for survival, hatchet, knife, matches and a rifle & ammo. SECOND I am carving out a piece of property that I will claim as my territory with game and fresh water, a tent would be nice but not necessary. THIRD I will entertain the possibility of allies, short blondes with a nice rack and slim waist are moved to the front of the line....no im not kidding it gets cold at night and with no tv or computers a man HAS to have entertainment. Anything that impedes this short list of "must haves" in any way will be killed, not out of any particular malice but out of self preservation. I tried to play the "hero" role in the beginning and after a few quick life spans I realized I had to look out for me because no one else was going to. Call me a bandit, hell call me whatever you want but at the end of the day I am the one eating good with the best equiptment and that fine shortie....your feeding flies. Just keeping it real gentleman.

[Jurkey 7]

Predation...is it a problem? As an apex predator myself I would have to say no, Darwin I think would agree with me. To those of you that have been indoctrinated with the ideology that all things should be equal and that anything less than a tie in every endeavor is somehow inherently evil, I say you're demonstrably ill in the head. Scenario: you find yourself in an environment where 99% of the population has been stricken by some unknown disease, turning them into zombies. There are no more semi's running food to the grocery store and the infrastructure of the nation including all the "creature comforts" are down. No food no power no TV no nothing...you have a flashlight a bandaid and some tylenol. Now, you hero's out there talking about rebuilding civilization I applaud your sentiment, I however am going into self preservation mode quick fast and in a fkn HURRY!! FIRST I am securing the basics for survival, hatchet, knife, matches and a rifle & ammo. SECOND I am carving out a piece of property that I will claim as my territory with game and fresh water, a tent would be nice but not necessary. THIRD I will entertain the possibility of allies, short blondes with a nice rack and slim waist are moved to the front of the line....no im not kidding it gets cold at night and with no tv or computers a man HAS to have entertainment. Anything that impedes this short list of "must haves" in any way will be killed, not out of any particular malice but out of self preservation. I tried to play the "hero" role in the beginning and after a few quick life spans I realized I had to look out for me because no one else was going to. Call me a bandit, hell call me whatever you want but at the end of the day I am the one eating good with the best equiptment and that fine shortie....your feeding flies. Just keeping it real gentleman.

We both know that probably neither of us would survive a zombie apocalypse, and I doubt more than 2% of this forum would, if it any at all.

Now, I've played a bandit myself. Some people would still classify me as such, but it's because it's the only thing viable. Being a hero in this game is like playing left-handed tennis, when you are right-handed - you are willingly handicapping yourself.

And to the other guys posting, nice stories. I had some similar stories myself, where I gave people mercy, and gave them some stuff to help them along the road. But lately, the problem has gotten worse. Even though the stories are nice, does anyone have any suggestions on how to "fixing" the problem, or at least making it more viable to be friendly?

[Zombie Jesus 723]

Add mechanics that encourage teamwork, which is already being done for standalone. I am not saying force teamwork for being friendly through perks and rewards, just make certain activities fairly impossible to achieve by yourself. As it stands now I tend to die far more often trying to be friendly or walking around with a group (groups attract more attention so called "friendly" survivors make assumptions about groups just like the stupid assumptions players make about Ghillie suits), so besides having someone there to provide a blood bag there is no in game incentive to teamwork. There are obvious benefits to team work that apply to almost every game, you have an extra set of eyes and ears watching your back and you can find and fix up vehicles far quicker. But as far as fixing the mod, probably not going to happen from an official standpoint, but check out some of the community fixes that are being rolled out or discussed in the private hive discussion. The base code for the mod has been made public so we will see some decent community experiments coming out over the next couple of months and maybe one of those will address the "problem" as you see it.

Even if a significant amount of incentives were deployed I still think you will have a sizable chunk of the population who will still shoot you for the lolz. Before most of my IRL friends stopped playing I was not all that friendly on any server since I did not require anything teaming up had to offer, now that I find myself alone a good chunk of the time I tend to put myself at risk by being friendly. Sometimes it works out, yesterday I got some NVG on Fallujah by making a side chat trade with a completely random bandit (had the skin) at the airfield, while other times it ends in a murder.

If you are really desperate you can always join a non PvP server where people are highly encouraged to work together and KoS is a bannable offense, personally these servers take away a core feature and do not seem all that fun but whatever floats your boat. Also I have been murdered as a direct result of attempting to follow the server rules, saw a helicopter and I had an AS50 that would normally result in the helicopter being destroyed but tried to follow server rules and got myself into a terrible position and was murdered (all in all the server was very nice though, had no idea that it was a non PvP server until someone told me then I checked the rules and it was clearly posted I just never read them since it is usually obvious like no hacking).

Edited October 1, 2012 by Zombie Jesus

[Professional N00b 347]

And to the other guys posting, nice stories. I had some similar stories myself, where I gave people mercy, and gave them some stuff to help them along the road. But lately, the problem has gotten worse. Even though the stories are nice, does anyone have any suggestions on how to "fixing" the problem, or at least making it more viable to be friendly?

Sadly the only thing that comes to mind is find a group. My group usually tries to call friendly when we see a player and we haven't had anyone betray that yet. Most people aren't willing to try and take down a three man team all on their own in such a situation. So long as your team keeps their end then the other guys will also be able to live (though finding other teams that do this is pretty rare).

Of course, there are times where they do try firing at you right off the bat like a complete moron and they usually die pretty fast. Having more than one person makes the game infinitely easier. Also more interesting since you get to try group tactics.

Also, try not to sound too nervous if you're using voice chat (which you should seriously consider if you're not already). Someone sounding nervous, no matter how natural it is, tends to make others nervous. When that happens, shit goes down.

[Skin69niks 72]

@Jurkey, I think the brilliance of Rocket's decision to allow people to make their own decisions on HOW to play speaks for itself. YOU must adapt to the environment, not the environment adapt to YOU. This is the nature that every species has had to deal with since life began, it is pure evolutionary DEMANDS. To evolve, a species MUST be able to adapt to its environment or it will surely perish, I chose to adapt and have been successful. I have a squad, we watch each others backs and act within a hierarchy just like wolves, the Alpha male calls the shots and the rest follow that lead, we are extremely successful. If this were to happen in real life, I would like to think I would be fine. I have a reserve of fresh water, food and weapons so I will be no easy mark but I am more prepared for the crash of the dollar than I am a zombie apocalypse....whatever may come, I am prepared regardless. This game is a perfect case study for psychologists, I would love to see a class dissect this game and a dedicated servers players and read the reports...THAT would be good reading methinks.

[platecloak 14]

I've only played for 2 months but have been thinking that players should have if not unique then at least more different look to give them identity. For this to work, the skin must be random and unreplacable (perhaps with exception from ghillie and camo).

This means that by letting someone live means you'll recognise that person later on if you happen to see him. If you kill him you won't know which skin he will have when respawn. If a kill is observed by someone else on a distance he might take side next time the killer is seen in a fight with someone else - or spread the word. Observing players without engaging them gives a small information bonus as the observer can learn more about the player each time he sees him doing something. That also builds small amounts of trust.

One way to accomplish this is to give players the various zombie skins instead of the sketchy looking survivor skin. Players would look like farmer, suit guy etc . As many different skins as possible should be used.

[RogueOne 112]

I honestly don't see the downside to there being a shoot on sight mentality. I stand to lose the most by trusting people I don't know. I stand to gain the most, or remain the same, by shooting people on sight.

Your avatar disturbs me.

[Zombie Jesus 723]

@Jurkey, I think the brilliance of Rocket's decision to allow people to make their own decisions on HOW to play speaks for itself. YOU must adapt to the environment, not the environment adapt to YOU. This is the nature that every species has had to deal with since life began, it is pure evolutionary DEMANDS. To evolve, a species MUST be able to adapt to its environment or it will surely perish, I chose to adapt and have been successful. I have a squad, we watch each others backs and act within a hierarchy just like wolves, the Alpha male calls the shots and the rest follow that lead, we are extremely successful. If this were to happen in real life, I would like to think I would be fine. I have a reserve of fresh water, food and weapons so I will be no easy mark but I am more prepared for the crash of the dollar than I am a zombie apocalypse....whatever may come, I am prepared regardless. This game is a perfect case study for psychologists, I would love to see a class dissect this game and a dedicated servers players and read the reports...THAT would be good reading methinks.

So this is the guy who buys gold from commercials and watches Glenn Beck.

[Skin69niks 72]

So this is the guy who buys gold from commercials and watches Glenn Beck.

I buy my gold direct. At present values, I have quadrupled my money and I see my investment reaping even greater returns with time. Glenn Beck is a hoot, but I don't "watch" my radio....I am busy typing to irreverent blasphemers like YOU!

[tommes 331]

I hope you bought the guns to protect it too.

[GoodGrief 21]

Buy silver, crash JPM

[Zombie Jesus 723]

I buy my gold direct. At present values, I have quadrupled my money and I see my investment reaping even greater returns with time. Glenn Beck is a hoot, but I don't "watch" my radio....I am busy typing to irreverent blasphemers like YOU!

Joke was a joke, did you buy the seed survival backpack as well?

Edit: When you say a hoot I expect you mean boderline insane and touched in the head.

Edited October 1, 2012 by Zombie Jesus

[Mister_Meatball 5]

After a respawn I found a AKS-74U at a deer stand and headed down to Elektro. I saw a survivor crouch running through the streets but decided to go ahead and loot the red brick building across from the Schoolhouse. Shooting started and I saw a bandit (I thought) on the second floor balcony of the Schoolhouse with a 1866. I shot him and waited in the building looking for movement. Someone else came out on the balcony and I shot at him thinking it was his comrade. I hit him but didn't kill him and he went around the corner but was still on the balcony. I ran across the open square (yes I know) and into the schoolhouse, up the stairs and out on the balcony ready to finish this guy off. At this point he heard me and told me not to shoot, still being wary but knowing of his wounded state I kept my gun raised but allowed him to round the corner. He explained he was doing the same as I did with the last bandit and was unaware I had killed him. I gave him blood and he game me some loot, we went our separate ways without shooting each other in the back. Some of the most interesting encounters I have had involved not KoS (well attempted KoS).

tl;dr A mix of playstyles is what I have found the be the best for getting the full experience out of Dayz.

[colekern 1364]

Easy. Make that survivor worth more than his gear by making DayZ harder.

[kebman 213]

This one's simple.

If you want more excitement, then find a survivor, get behind cover, and then call out "friendly" at gunpoint. :D Tell him you don't intend to shoot him (unless he does something stupid). Most likely he'll behave, and you can find out if he's trustworthy from there. (But if he does something stupid, he dies, and you can let him know what a dork he was.)

It brings a whole new kind of excitement to the game, as there are so many things that can go wrong. Yes, you do risk something by not killing on sight, but then again, your reward is surviving while also robbing people, making friends, or making short-term slaves - whatever gives you the most excitement to try. Many are more than willing to role-play with you if you do it. Also, if you choose the medic route, you'll get to enjoy that Hero skin. It's awesome!

And there you have it. You can now decide whatever it is you'd like to do next.