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The Safety System


RobertJohnson

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Hello everyone :)

 

Let's talk about the new safety system once the build 25 is out !

 

1) What is it ?

 

The safety system allow you do hunt with your good mates without hurt them, still you can PVP if you want.

 

2) How does it works ?!

 

You always start your game with the safety enabled, you have a new hotkey ("P" by default) to toggle your safety off/on.

Trigger safety take some times (~1s) but the other can see that you disabled your safety instantly.

Then it take some times (~10s) to toggle your safety again.

Pressing "P" will cancel all the current timed action (like eat, etc.).

 

Someone with Safety Off will have a skull in his username (this can be changed by the admin) :

 

kexhcl.png

 

To know if you're in safety or not, you'll have a new UI on bottom right :

Safety On :

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Safety Off :

n6xu0g.png

 

3) Impact on PVP

 

Safety On = You CAN'T hurt other people who have their Safety On but you CAN hit people with Safety Off.

Safety Off = You CAN hurt everyone (safety On or Off).

 

4) Example

 

You are alone, with safety On, you met someone with Safety On.

You : "Hello, wanna scavenge with me ?"

Other : "Sure, let's go !"

Other player trigger Safety Off, you INSTANTLY see it (the skull appear), but the Other player have to wait 1 second before he can hurt you.

You : "What the..." *hit with the baseball bat*.

 

What does this mean ?

If someone want to mess with you, he'll have to think about it, really hard, because he'll have 1second where he can't hit you, but you can hit him.

 

Also, remember as a player with Safety On, you can sitll hurt people with Safety Off, they won't be invincible because you're in Safety On, Safety On only mean you CAN'T hurt other Safety On (for example when you go hunting with your group, to avoid any mistake).

 

5) Administration

 

This new Safety is configurable by a server admin, you have 2 new Server Options :

SafetySystem=true // Allow the user to change their safety (if false and if PVP=true, then the safety will always be off).

ShowSafety=true // Allow the players to see if someone have his safety off with the skull icon.

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What about when your group encounters other group who also uses safety mode to not to accidentally kill each other, but they aren't exactly friendly towards your group. Then you'd have to disable the safety mode leaving you vulnerable to get accidentally killed by your friend and vice versa.

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What about when your group encounters other group who also uses safety mode to not to accidentally kill each other, but they aren't exactly friendly towards your group. Then you'd have to disable the safety mode leaving you vulnerable to get accidentally killed by your friend and vice versa.

Err, don't get within melee range of your friend.

=D

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What about when your group encounters other group who also uses safety mode to not to accidentally kill each other, but they aren't exactly friendly towards your group. Then you'd have to disable the safety mode leaving you vulnerable to get accidentally killed by your friend and vice versa.

Err, don't get within melee range of your friend.

=D

Yeah melee weapons can be handled. Shotguns are a different thing ;) You just have to be in the general direction where your friend is aiming and you get shot accidentally.

But maybe this just promotes more carefulness when you are out and about in a zombie infested apocalyptic world.

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Sounds lika a great system, but i'm worried the impact is to small if you only get a 1 sec window to hit someone before they can hammer you in the face. The traitorous player could mitigate it just by taking a few steps from you before turning safety off (at least if you only got a melee weapon).

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Sounds lika a great system, but i'm worried the impact is to small if you only get a 1 sec window to hit someone before they can hammer you in the face. The traitorous player could mitigate it just by taking a few steps from you before turning safety off (at least if you only got a melee weapon).

 

Sure, it'll be balanced after the first test, for now we decided 1second but it may become 2 or 3 seconds, we need to test it in real condition to see :)

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Sounds lika a great system, but i'm worried the impact is to small if you only get a 1 sec window to hit someone before they can hammer you in the face. The traitorous player could mitigate it just by taking a few steps from you before turning safety off (at least if you only got a melee weapon).

 

Sure, it'll be balanced after the first test, for now we decided 1second but it may become 2 or 3 seconds, we need to test it in real condition to see :)

 

 

It could easily be a setting that could be changed in the serveroptions.ini though, right?

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RJ not around skype for next few days, just thought I'd chime in here with a further idea or two me, Binks and Mash had. Basically there isn't a 10 second cooldown by default. Cooldown before being able to reenable safety is clocked up by hitting other players. So you can switch it on / off freely, but if you swing an axe at a buddy, then you'll get say a 20 second cooldown before you can reenable safety. Hit them again, 40 seconds. So the more aggressive you are, the longer it takes for you to hide your 'I've been a bad boy' status. Perhaps these should be exponential too. Kill four people with safeties on and you might have to stay in safety off for 10 minutes? Obv that could be configurable.

 

Also (as an option), allow for usernames not to be shown on players with safety off. In which case it's just show the skull. Will allow servers that are more PvP focused to allow bandits to travel incognito without revealing their username, at the expense of being clear targets for non bandits. Like the old privateer ships putting up their skull and crossbow to hide their nation flags :D

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Sounds lika a great system, but i'm worried the impact is to small if you only get a 1 sec window to hit someone before they can hammer you in the face. The traitorous player could mitigate it just by taking a few steps from you before turning safety off (at least if you only got a melee weapon).

 

This adds to the roleplay though, they would be trying to stay behind people so their suspicious movements that are simulated by the safety turn off are not visible to other players. If you don't trust someone, keep an eye on them. The skull isn't necessarily to warn you to attack them first, but just to warn you that they are reaching for their gun, or looking a bit suspicious, eyes darting around nervously or whatever the tells are, to give people the heads up if they are observant and give them a chance of getting away if not defending themselves.. 

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Eh, I don't know how I feel about this new implementation. My problem with it: that it will take away a lot of the tension when you meet a new group or player. If they don't have the skull tag floating over their head, you would relax, but that isn't very realistic. Lemmy's explanation also doesn't really sync up with how two strangers meeting in the middle of the zombie apocalypse would typically act. 

 

For instance, if my group encountered another group, we would probably reach for our weapons and glance around nervously, even if we weren't a murderous bunch. Being wary and aggressive are being lumped together with this new system which is kind of my qualm about it (also, it's a bit gamey).

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Eh, I don't know how I feel about this new implementation. My problem with it: that it will take away a lot of the tension when you meet a new group or player. If they don't have the skull tag floating over their head, you would relax, but that isn't very realistic. Lemmy's explanation also doesn't really sync up with how two strangers meeting in the middle of the zombie apocalypse would typically act. 

 

For instance, if my group encountered another group, we would probably reach for our weapons and glance around nervously, even if we weren't a murderous bunch. Being wary and aggressive are being lumped together with this new system which is kind of my qualm about it (also, it's a bit gamey).

Well, you can always just deactivate the skull icon:

 

 

 

ShowSafety=true // Allow the players to see if someone have his safety off with the skull icon.

 

I actually like the skull idea a lot, tbh. A "party" system would be cool as well, that way you could activate pvp only for people outside your group. 

The only problem I see is that, without any form of friendly fire, you can be really "trigger happy". Let's say that your friend is surrounded by zombies, you can just take your gun and start shooting them without worrying about accidentally hitting him. Maybe you guys could put a system that, if you accidentaly hit someone without having your safety on, you get some kind of bad moodle or something? Like feeling guilty or idk. That way you would still be carefull to not accidentally shoot your friend.

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Eh, I don't know how I feel about this new implementation. My problem with it: that it will take away a lot of the tension when you meet a new group or player. If they don't have the skull tag floating over their head, you would relax, but that isn't very realistic. Lemmy's explanation also doesn't really sync up with how two strangers meeting in the middle of the zombie apocalypse would typically act. 

 

For instance, if my group encountered another group, we would probably reach for our weapons and glance around nervously, even if we weren't a murderous bunch. Being wary and aggressive are being lumped together with this new system which is kind of my qualm about it (also, it's a bit gamey).

 

It's optional. You can play on a server without if you want. First and foremost is the desire to provide people who don't want shoot on sight but don't want to forbid PvP completely with tools to balance PvP slightly in favour of those defending. We're not making an alternate reality, we're making a game and need to balance it as such. I see your point however, and if most people play with it off then fair enough. We just don't want to get into the situation where people are 'no point in playing Zomboid, it's just shoot on sight', as well as provide a way of avoiding hacking your friend's neck with a axe whenever you try and help them.

 

re: and you would relax? Would you? They are 1 second away from being able to unload a shotgun in you. The skull is just a way of compensating for the fact we have tiny little sprites with no expression or way of telling someone's about to fire until they right click, left click and you're dead. You wouldn't necessarily trust them, would keep your eye on them, and if they suddenly made a move to attack without you're attention being diverted you'd have an opportunity to defend yourself.

 

If you've seen Walking Dead, think of the scene in the bar in season 2 with those two guys.

 

They went in with their safeties on. Was everyone relaxed? They were being 'friendly' but it was clear they weren't to be trusted, but that wasn't enough for Rick to shoot them down where they stand. Conversation continued, and then suddenly their safeties came off, and Rick was able to react quick enough to shoot them both dead.

 

In PZ MP as it stands, Rick would have been a goner, because there would be literally no way for him to notice their sudden immediate intent to kill him. The only defence he would have would be to shoot first, just in case. Shoot on sight mentality.

 

That's how to think of this feature in terms of 'realism'. If we had massively detailed 3D models you could see in close up 1080p maybe we could convey it in more real terms, but the graphics don't allow for that.

 

The safety affords you the ability to vigilantly 'wait and see' instead of shooting first 'just in case they are hostile'.

 

remember: Default (even though it may not be now, I don't know) is co-op. Isn't being completely unable to attack other people at all 'gamey' and lacking in tension, or not very realistic? Is that a reason to dislike its implementation in the game / wish it not to exist?

 

As RJ says, we'll be implementing a party system once NPCs are back in full dev swing, which will give further options to people for their servers. Whole point of Zomboid's MP (as well as SP sandbox) is to provide everyone with the options of how they want to play the game.

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