I'd love to see some screenshots of some of the new stuff. The DayZ forums are down for me though.
I'd love to see some screenshots of some of the new stuff. The DayZ forums are down for me though.
So it's going to be shoot players on sight from now on. I understand that the bandit skin switch was artificial as hell but good player behavior (as has been mentioned earlier) should at the very least be somehow incentivised. Otherwise the "loner experience" in this game is dead for good. I guess I will have to join a roving gang of bandits to keep playing with any sort of life expectancy.
It wasn't before?Originally Posted by rhizo
Well I've only just started playing recently, but of the 5 people I've come face to face with so far, none shot on sight, but one did shoot after I turned my back.
Isn't that sort of the whole point of a zombie apocalypse scenario; to examine how people react once society breaks down and accountability returns to the individual?
How could you incentivise good behaviour without it becoming silly and gamey? As in real life, it's people's morals, their relationship to others, their outlook on life, fear of punishment and any number of other things that keep us in check. When that's all stripped back, as in this instance, people get to see what they are truely like.
I think in order to incentivise cooperation the zombies need to be more dangerous. The only non-arbitrary reason for people to band together is when there is a greater threat to their collective survival. I personally am at the stage at which zombies are a joke, I have no trouble dealing with them wherever I encounter them. The only current threat they pose is if they get a lucky hit on you and knock you unconscious or break your leg.
How to do this? Well for starters fix the animations, zombies need to be a difficult but fair enemy. Player animations in Arma 2 work pretty fluidly, no reason zombies can't also. Then increase the numbers at least threefold.
Quite on the contrary. While I've only been playing this game a week, the only person who has not killed me on sight was a bandit. Every single survivor I've run across shot me instantly. The skin may have given some sense of security, but it was certainly a false one. Bandit skins were oft earned for simply defending oneself from some newbie with a gun and bloodlust.
It was a broken mechanic which should not be mourned.
I think you're onto something there DarkFenix.
I just waited over 30 min and was unable to play at all. Someone said there are DayZ servers down. My experience so far is that the whole setup is just too unreliable to bother with. I hope it shapes up some day.
And as in real life, when you are shot and killed, you come back alive at the waterfront.
What I'm trying to say is that there's one quite large thing which factors in these decisions and which is not modelled at all, and that is the fear of actually dying. And no, losing your gear is not the same thing.
Or, in other words (I'm not good at expressing myself tonight it seems), one should not think of the dynamics of DayZ as a credible approximation of what would happen in a zombie apocalypse (or any other TEOTWAWKI scenario for that matter), because there is no real punishment for being a dickhead or acting stupid. Moral issues? All the people you meet are just images on computer screen and no-one is actually hurt in any meaningful way. Fear of retribution? Nothing will happen to you personally, ever, regardless of your actions in DayZ.
So what I mean is, it's a good game, but for the love of god stop thinking of it like it's somehow producing a credible outcome of a social setting with actual people.
Last edited by Velko; 27-05-2012 at 05:47 PM.
It's just had a big update, and they tend to bring a day or two of instability with them. Not tried to play with the new version yet but the connection issues people were suffering previously seem to have been sorted over the past couple of weeks.
The point people don't seem to be picking up on, is that statistically the bandit skin system was not working. A guy with a bandit skin was no more dangerous than a guy with a survivor skin. Rocket doesn't intend to incentivise being nice. He wants to make an environment and let the players decide how it works, not dictate how people act with mechanics (I'd link his posts if the forums were working).
Last edited by Kelron; 27-05-2012 at 06:25 PM.
I'm not looking for an argument but I have to say, trotting out this comparison is just silly. There wouldn't be much of a game if you only got one play through. Using this concession to gameplay to justify other gamey handholding changes is not the way to go.
If there's no fear of death then what's your gripe? Just respawn and get on with it. But since you do feel the need for a feature to help mitigate death then you must have a reason for not wanting to die. I conclude that so does your would be killer and therefore there is balance.What I'm trying to say is that there's one quite large thing which factors in these decisions and which is not modelled at all, and that is the fear of actually dying. And no, losing your gear is not the same thing.
Or, in other words (I'm not good at expressing myself tonight it seems), one should not think of the dynamics of DayZ as a credible approximation of what would happen in a zombie apocalypse (or any other TEOTWAWKI scenario for that matter), because there is no real punishment for being a dickhead or acting stupid. Moral issues? All the people you meet are just images on computer screen and no-one is actually hurt in any meaningful way. Fear of retribution? Nothing will happen to you personally, ever, regardless of your actions in DayZ.
Regarding morals and fear of retribution, I qualified that by saying "When that's all stripped back, as in this instance, people get to see what they are truely like". I am aware that retribution is probably not a factor (unless you find your killer again later or have friends in the area) but that still doesn't change the fact that a person chose to kill another simply because they had nothing to fear. That is still a moral judgement.
But this is why the mod is so popular, there are actual people behind every avatar and your actions affect them and their enjoyment of the game just as theirs affect you. Reading the blogs, diaries and tweets, they recount their interations with other players, not how they found and ate a can of beans or killed their nth zombie of the day.So what I mean is, it's a good game, but for the love of god stop thinking of it like it's somehow producing a credible outcome of a social setting with actual people.
As a final thought, there is the salute, the cease fire hand wave, chat and voip. There are number of options for communication open to the player before murder becomes necessary.
Last edited by Xune; 27-05-2012 at 07:30 PM.
Humans are fundamentally social animals, we have evolved to co-operate and the majority of people will do just that. In real world crisis situations people will usually help each other, even total strangers, its actually rare for people to become aggressively selfish. As this is a game though peoples 'internet' personas are allowed to run rampant and shoot everything in sight.
I'm not saying that its a bad thing for a game, its not as it encourages intelligent game play to avoid/kill the griefers, but its also not a very good representation of what would happen in a 'real' zombie apocalypse either. Real human behaviour simply cannot be represented within a game when the players are removed from all personal contact and proximity from each other. Basically the 'reality' argument is a bit of a strawman.
This game has just about always been shoot on sight for most people (not me so far though). It simply takes too long to get decent loot and the initial scrabble for a compass is too ardous to risk losing it all by giving the other guy a chance. I'm not sure what bonuses having a high humanity should give you without it becomeing gamey, some kind of mechanism is being worked on though so only time will tell.
Incidentally the new Ghillie suits are amazingly good.
It's ok, history isn't a subject for everyone
I'd suggest that - even considering the best case of proximal VOIP working - that communicating is very much more difficult in the game than shooting. Physical expressiveness is broadly limited to flopping your character's arms around in preset animations or trying to very conspicuously point your gun somewhere other than the face of the other person - who you're trying to look at!
It absolutely is. The value of life in the game, and the extent to which people will hold it against you for taking it (particularly at this point), is far, far lower than it should be.Using this concession to gameplay to justify other gamey handholding changes is not the way to go.
As others have suggested, fiddling with the zombie threat might be a way to change that - perhaps it's possible that meeting up with another survivor should, almost always, be of a real and significant benefit to you; even if this is the one and only time that you ever see each other, and they have to log off after 10 minutes.
There are, what, 7 billion humans milling around? Whilst a fair few of them are involved in conflicts and smaller-scale wankery, a great many more are mostly being mostly pleasant to each other.It's ok, history isn't a subject for everyone
Last edited by Zetetic; 27-05-2012 at 10:42 PM.
Alright, I'm looking for a group. Ideally a relaxed, friendly, but organized one.
I've been playing for a week, so I'm not a total noob. I have decent gear (had better on my last char, but I spawned in the middle of a gunfight, in the middle of nowhere!) and I know how to use it. I'm not a player-killer, unless overtly threatened or defending a friend, and I like helping people. So, I'm looking for people who play similarly.
Till now I've played mostly solo, or with one other guy I met playing. I'd like to change that, but it's been hard to accomplish in-game. Mostly you get "temporary friends". Someone who helps you out, or vice-versa, or you bump into and have a brief experience with. These are routinely fascinating, but fleeting, and I want more.
I live on the East coast of the US, but I generally play in the middle of the night so i go for those servers with the time reversed, since I don't play at night unless I've got a military flashlight at least. I've got Skype, but have never used Mumbles or Teamspeak (not averse to them, just never had the need, I've always been a single-player gamer till now).
So I guess this is my application. Anyone hiring? ;)
Last edited by thebigJ_A; 28-05-2012 at 03:48 AM.
Pretty heavy game that gets into this kind of discussion!
The funny thing about history is it's only what you've been shown. Some people see volunteers helping others in a crisis, some people see massive riots and looting. I guess it depends where your TV is tuned?
perhaps you might have some luck here: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/foru...isation-thread ?
There is one thing that totally puts me off for playing Day Z. Aside from the server issues and how hard it is to connect sometimes. I got a small child and a very busy life. Meaning only time I get to play is during the nights. And because the realistic day cycle all the UK and EU servers are always on night time. Which is kind of unplayable, even with full gamma settings and what not. For me to be able play I need to use US servers, which mostly work fine, but of course there is more latency. So not only the connection issues and the general jank I need to deal with freaking latency.
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