SUGGESTION: A system to supercede concepts of ‘humanity’, ‘survivors’ and ‘bandits'

[Flat 0]

Hi all,

First time poster with a suggestion that I haven’t seen on the forums yet so am posting it for you guys (and hopefully Rocket himself) to digest/dissect:

----------------------

SUGGESTED SYSTEM:

If someone KILLS a player then the KILLER is prevented from creating a new character for X minutes, starting from the moment the victim’s body hits the floor.

If someone is SHOT then they can SHOOT and KILL the aggressor with impunity within the following Y minutes.

If someone dies and still has time to serve before they can create a new character then they have to wait.

-----------------------

It’s that simple. There are many reasons why I think this will work. Here are my top 5:

1. The values of X and Y can easily be changed at any time for balancing

What values these should be would have to be playtested. My gut feeling is X should be around 15 minutes per kill (cumulative) and the impunity time of Y should be 1 hour.

PLEASE NOTE: The X and Y minutes are based on real world time. Most penalties will run their course while the player is still alive so they will never even be affected by them unless they have killed someone recently.

Also, players do not have to be logged into the game to serve their time. This means that between gaming sessions you will almost certainly have no penalty accrued to serve if you die, no matter what you did the session before.

2. It primarily targets the ‘deathmatch’-wannabe players

Currently if someone spawns on the shore they can run into a city, go on a reckless killing spree, finally get killed, instantly respawn on the shore, run into a city, go on another killing spree, ad infinitum. They lose nothing as they spawn with the same items that they lost.

With the proposed system a player like that is expunged from the game (all servers) for their remaining penalty time. It also provides the player who took them down with some tangible satisfaction.

Run and gun players will either have get used to sitting around waiting, adapt their playing style, or leave DayZ and play something else more suiting them.

3. No need for artificial in-game identifications

There is no functional need for any bandit skins, humanity points, murder counts or bandit counts. Everyone appears equal in game because everyone IS equal in game. There are no good or bad guys in the game world.

Instead the penalties are served in the ‘real world’, and will only regularly affect players who are wilfully playing in an overly destructive and indiscriminate manner.

4. If you are professional then you will hardly ever be affected at all

Any player worth his or her salt is not planning on dying any time soon. If they risk killing a player and they come out in one piece, loot and move on then once their penalty time has elapsed there will be NO long term trace on their character or any penalty left to serve should they die.

If they do get killed with some penalty time still outstanding, well they knew the risks going in. By moving the penalty out of the current character and the penalty being served ‘between’ characters then the actual characters remain pure and unburdened by concepts such as ‘humanity’, ‘survivor’ and ‘bandit’. You are free to change your playing style as needs must to survive.

Of course, if you never kill anyone except in self defence then you’ll NEVER have to wait to respawn.

5. Shooting first has a risk associated with it

Currently there is no incentive to hold your fire. With this system, if you pull the trigger first and it’s not a clean kill then your would-be prey can fight back in self defence without penalty.

If you’ve killed someone recently and you die then you’ll have to serve what’s left of your X penalty before you can return. This makes it harder to retrieve items from your fallen body.

I think the system above is pure and simple, but I would like to also propose a slight extension to it to better accommodate groups and promote teamwork.

----------------------

SUGGESTED ADDENDUM:

You can form temporary bonds between other players by standing close and both saluting each other simultaneously. The bonds last until one of the players logs off.

Allegiance benefit: Safety in numbers

Once formed, then if one of the players is attacked then all players that they have bonded with can fight back at the aggressor with impunity for the Y minutes.

Allegiance drawback: Shared responsibility

Be careful who you form bonds with. If a player in a bond attacks someone then all players who have bonded directly with them can be shot with impunity for Y minutes by the victim and THEIR associated bonded players.

-----------------------

This addendum would mean that if you are shot at from the tree line by a player and you see his mate behind another tree then you can shoot and kill them too without penalty. It also means that if you are shot then your mates can shoot back too and help you out.

Hope you like my suggestions. I think they do a good job of targeting the real problem players (the run-and-gun destructive types) while letting everyone else do whatever they deem necessary to survive in this PHENOMINAL game.