Everyone Shoots Everyone - Some musings

Many players now shoot each other on sight in the game, since the removal of Bandit skins, especially in the North


It's a fascinating issue; that one of the main strengths of the game has inadvertently become a weakness. I agree something should be done but the devs will have to tread very carefully or they'll risk compromising the reality of the game world. In real life you wouldn't know who was friendly and who wasn't, paranoia and trust is a big factor of the game's enjoyment. The best moments of tension in the Road and the Walking Dead come from meetings between groups where they are trying to gauge each other's intentions. Unfortunately the emergent gameplay of Day Z has reached a point where most people now shoot before asking. It's a really interesting outcome of player psychology and game design.


With my design hat on, I think it's vital that banditry and player killing aren't punished arbitrarily. Without making fundamental changes to the game's mechanics, here are some thoughts about how they could address the issue:


First of all it needs to be easier for players to establish if each other are friendly, without resorting to skins
- Local voice chat and messaging needs to work and be more obvious onscreen, to help people discern if other players are friendly or not
- This could be supported by sound bytes, for example: "I'm friendly!" "Put down your weapon!" and in-game gestures which don't involve putting down your gun


Secondly there needs to be some way to manipulate the actions between newly spawned players and veterans. There's a number of problems:
- New players and players who have just been killed have no qualms in playing the game like a deathmatch, as there is no real penalty for death.
- Bandits and murderers prey on newly spawned players and dominate the cities by the coast - although the emergent hotspots are a cool consequence it's now just frustrating and too dangerous for anyone who really wants to survive to go anywhere near them
- To get inland takes a long time. When players have spent literally an hour or two to get to the North, many will shoot others on sight as they don't want to have thrown away their real-life time


I haven't thought of a solution to these problems yet - it would be interesting to see how spawn point placement, and city placement would change player behaviour


I was discussing the issues with my sister and she pointed out that in real life, many people would end up in groups (which of course happens in the game to a limited extent). However in Day Z groups aren't supported in any way. If you could at least spawn in the same place as a friend (or together with), you would instantly have support at the beginning and group dynamics would come into play more.


The suggestion above about increasing the zombie threat to encourage group behaviour is an interesting one. For a time there was a bug which caused loads of zombies to spawn, which made raiding a lot harder (but also at times frustrating). I'm sure that this forced people to work together more, and there were a lot more situtations where you would see people getting mobbed by too many zeds to handle and you would see players coming to help or sitting back to watch the show. Players who wanted to kill each other in town had to think very carefully before firing a shot as it would bring the horde.


A lot of indiscriminate killing is happening in the countryside through scoped rifles. If there were more zombies in the countryside and if they had a bigger hearing range, this would have bigger implications for players who just want to lie down and snipe people. Perhaps reducing the number of scoped weapons which spawn (or their ammo) would also help


More customisation for player appearance could also help. There's only a few skin variations and no name tags (on most servers) so it's impossible to know who the player in your sights is. If you lose sight of someone and see a player again shortly afterwards, there is no guarantee it's the same person. It would also allow players who wanted to play as villains the chance to dress appropriately if they wanted to.


Part of the problem is always going to be greifers which you can't do much about, but for other players out there in the North it may just be boredom which drives them to stalk and shoot other players. Once there are more things to do in the game perhaps they'll start doing more productive activities...