Bandit Identification & Humanity

[BeanyUndead]

Hey everyone,
Just wanted to put forward a desire and a position. I know not everyone is going to agree which is way I am putting on this forum for discussion.

I really want bandit identification and humanity to return. At the moment, my character has no direction or purpose other than very basic survival. For me, this has made the game stale and boring. If I see someone, I usually avoid them or keep a gun on them as there is ‘nothing’ to base a threat assessment on other than weapon position and/or what they are saying.

In the mod (which I do not want to go back to as DayZ standalone looks and feels awesome in comparison) I challenged myself to be a bandit hunter. I usually failed, but it was exciting. If I saw someone with a rag on their head, I would know that they had killed other non-bandit players and felt totally justified in shooting them in cold blood. Not only that, if I saw someone without a rag on their head, I felt a little safer in approaching them. Not totally safe mind-you, but definitely safer than in the current standalone. This meant it was easier to form groups and build community. And this was the case not only for me but for the bandits too. It was often thrilling to encounter a group of bandits that had teamed up under the banner of the common head-rag, and duke it out with them alongside my own team-mates. Brilliant.

This kind of ‘emergent yet not entirely safe team-building’ simply does not exist in DayZ Standalone other than through friendship groups in Steam Chat or TeamSpeak. Encounters are frustrating and player behaviour is without long-term character consequences.

The main argument put to me against this position usually involves saying something along the lines of ‘it is more realistic without bandit identifiers’ or that ‘it is unfair on bandits’. My response to these points are simple: it is unrealistic to assume that in a small post-apocalyptic community that you or the area in which you operate would not get a reputation for killing and looting. As facial identification and style identification are impossible in this game however, we need a substitute to symbolically represent the fact that people would get an idea of threats in a local area. As for it being unfair on bandits, it is currently unfair for anyone not a bandit. I want to make survival companions but can’t as anyone can be a bandit.

Anyway, that is what I think. Let me know if you agree or disagree. At the moment my friends and I are not playing because of how stale it has become to us. It is essentially nothing more than a large 'free-for-all' game based on a map that is far too huge to make such a game style fun. Would love to get back into this game though....

Standalone would be fine if it had always been this way. But the original DayZ had reputation in the form of humanity. That is why I want it back. I want DayZ back to being DayZ, not this FFA shooter with DayZ elements.

[MonkE]

Archecarde a écrit :

Anyone who is running with military gear is definetly a bandit. Currently zombies don't pose that much of a threat for players to need to have very high grade guns & loot. Anyone with high grade guns & loot is looking to kill someone or he will kill someone because he wont ever risk his high grade guns & loot.

Although that's very likely, it's not 'definite'.

I myself tend to end up with such gear, and still play the 'friendly' role.

[NaVeN]

I have military gear on and I'm not a bandit. i however return fire when shot at often with lethal accuracy. Its not right to judge someone with an m4 in their hands as a bandit. I happen to find heli crashes often. but not since the new update for some reason. Might have added more crash sites or changed them, to make it more fair to non faction players like myself. I get shot at more often at the crash sites than i do near any airfield or military base. but my point is if your looking for friends search the forums before searching in a town. FYI everyone is friendly until they have a gun with ammo. if unsure of their intensions follow them for a while to see what they do when they do encounter another player. you might be able to save them by killing someone shooting at them. I know I would be grateful and try to make friends if someone saved me out in the cold lonely world of Chernarus.

[nallepuh]

Yeah, i have some military gear and dont kos. I usually run with axe, because its good against zombies. So i think that if those better equipment people are running with melee weapons, they arent probably dangerous, because they are preparing to kill zombies. Or atleast if i would be trying to kill players, i would be equipping ranged weapon, so i could immediately aim and shoot. :)

I think good system to detect and help determining if the other player is hostile or atleast has killed before you, would be that if you would wave your hand, then it would show your name above you, that way you could easier to detect if the other player has killed you before. And if they dont wave back, you could consider them as a hostile and shoot, or retreat.

That way, immersion would be still there.

Then with letters and pen, you could leave warning messages to other players too.

[Felony Ferret]

Gollum~ a écrit :

Archecarde a écrit :

Anyone who is running with military gear is definetly a bandit. Currently zombies don't pose that much of a threat for players to need to have very high grade guns & loot. Anyone with high grade guns & loot is looking to kill someone or he will kill someone because he wont ever risk his high grade guns & loot.

Although that's very likely, it's not 'definite'.

I myself tend to end up with such gear, and still play the 'friendly' role.

Me too. :/

[Dies Fourth]

heres a way to distinguish the good guy from the bad guys.................... same system as IRL and has been around AND working since the dawn of mankind, its worked all through history im sure it will work in this video game.

Bad guys shoot you

Good guys dont

Have a nice day

[leoimotep]

Survive by lagging and bugging and rooolbacking while geting kicked and killed by those "poor" admins, when they see you


and in fact maybe not swon the name whil waving, but showing a icon like a axe foe a zombies killer or if he past by player in like ~900m(cause of mosin) without killing them/him and a gun for a players killer, or something like that, like a better/smaller hero/bandit system, just sayng

AND i totaly agree with "dies fourth" :))

[Straikkeri]

dies fourth a écrit :

heres a way to distinguish the good guy from the bad guys.................... same system as IRL and has been around AND working since the dawn of mankind, its worked all through history im sure it will work in this video game.

Bad guys shoot you

Good guys dont

Have a nice day

Good guys die, bad guys live, or die to other bad guys = everyone becomes a bad guy.

[Felony Ferret]

Straikkeri a écrit :

dies fourth a écrit :

heres a way to distinguish the good guy from the bad guys.................... same system as IRL and has been around AND working since the dawn of mankind, its worked all through history im sure it will work in this video game.

Bad guys shoot you

Good guys dont

Have a nice day

Good guys die, bad guys live, or die to other bad guys = everyone becomes a bad guy.

You either die a hero, or you live long enough to kill bambi's mom...

[Dies Fourth]

re-arrange the words amyway you want.............. the game is about living and dieing, and theres no way to identify who kills you or when you die, you just know its gonna happen !

[theresejesu]

BeanyUndead a écrit :

I bet you suck at Card games. a écrit :

There will NOT be the Hero/Bandit system in SA, there should not be a blatant easy way to identify someone as a threat. No one I've ever talked to liked that system.

You shouldn't be able to look at someone and go "Oh well he's a murderer!" because he wears a facewrap. Besides what stops be from "Hero'ing" myself. then using that to lure people in to get robbed by the "Bad guys"?

Well you're talking to one now. And I and seven of my friends (all regular players) agree.
I agree you should not be able to look at someone a go "oh well he's a murderer' but you should be able to say 'that group of scavengers was gunned down by a broad-shouldered man with a scar on his face who drives a pickup yesterday, that sure looks like him". As the limitations of the game prevent such action, a symbolic identifier makes sense to me. As I said, the game has become stale. Wander around, don't shoot anyone, avoid contact, sit in the forest. Or go and randomly shoot people. At least with the bandit identification system, you can begin playing a game, where one 'side' can go after another.

Nothing stops you from heroing yourself falsely. I'm not talking about taking away the core of the game, but simple giving a basis, a spark, to start grouping and party formation. Thanks for the reply.

You know, being able to identify people in game as you do in real life would be ideal. I'm not sure they will be able to incorporate such individual expression of charcters in the game, but I agree, it would be great.

But think about it .. people can disguise themselves in real life, so . . . would it really be of any great beneift if we could the same in real life?

As far as a morality system, Dean has been pretty adamant there won't be anything that punishes bandits. So there will not be anything like you are asking for. Anything that is used will be very subtle:

10/2012 - Dean Hall -

10 min in:

"So I thnk the solution we are thinking of are more subtle features."

"More subtle things"

"I think punishing banditry is just totally not within the scope of what we want to do. If we do that, then we'll destroy everything. What we have to do is keep trying with the experiment until we find the right answer. If we compromise on that then I think the project just loses its core..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwNSqgloBt8


he discusses Infected - around 14 min

The real antagonists are body and environment.

2/14 Interview Q&A 38:13 in:

Q: Is there going to be a bandit/hero system, and if so how would you imagine it working?

I think that indicating some of the player's choices through visual changes in some subtle way is not too bad. So we originally thought maybe by changing the facial characteristics of the player could be interesting....I -I - you know Obviously people can see the bandit or hero system doesn't work because we don't want to have artificially what can only be assumed ... so blood on the hands when you've recently looted a another player, that kind of stuff. So we're looking at it those . . . .

http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/175718-detailed-information-summary-from-rockets-eurogamer-live-stream/

[BeanyUndead]

Hajami a écrit :

OP i have the Solution for you. It will be a little hard if you are a friendly player (i myself am a friendly player who tries to learn to become a hard killer instinct.

So the Solution is:
Iam playing with my3 Friends over Team Speak3. They are my Family iam friendly to them and they to me. Now everyone else is a possible hostile.
You can kill em all
You cann kill only the onces with fire arms
You could try to help friendlies without leting down your own guard while your friends secure the area.

If you decide to Play as bad ass and you kill me, i often had the luck to respawn nearby. than i talk to the next freshspawns i meet and tell them about your group. than i convince them to help me hunt you down (actualy worked)

But yes there has to be a lot of fine tuning to be done to this game.

Thanks for the advice :)

[BeanyUndead]

funbagz a écrit :

it will never happen because its a crap idea

Not as crap as your post! :)

[BeanyUndead]

dies fourth a écrit :

heres a way to distinguish the good guy from the bad guys.................... same system as IRL and has been around AND working since the dawn of mankind, its worked all through history im sure it will work in this video game.

Bad guys shoot you

Good guys dont

Have a nice day

A little simplistic but cool I guess.

[BeanyUndead]

Leo (FR/EN/PT) a écrit :

Survive by lagging and bugging and rooolbacking while geting kicked and killed by those "poor" admins, when they see you


and in fact maybe not swon the name whil waving, but showing a icon like a axe foe a zombies killer or if he past by player in like ~900m(cause of mosin) without killing them/him and a gun for a players killer, or something like that, like a better/smaller hero/bandit system, just sayng

AND i totaly agree with "dies fourth" :))

Interesting. Thanks for the reply.

[BeanyUndead]

Straikkeri a écrit :

dies fourth a écrit :

heres a way to distinguish the good guy from the bad guys.................... same system as IRL and has been around AND working since the dawn of mankind, its worked all through history im sure it will work in this video game.

Bad guys shoot you

Good guys dont

Have a nice day

Good guys die, bad guys live, or die to other bad guys = everyone becomes a bad guy.

Yeah, this is what I am not too fond of. I think the game should be a little more complicated than this. Thanks for the reply.