Reduce the amount of AMMO found in the world by A LOT. This way guns are OK but it is the ammo that should be conserved and used when it really is needed.
This also adds a new layer to the game because when you see someone you know ammo is rare so you have to think, does he have 1 in chamber? Does he have any in that mag/clip?
It will also stop the random killings, more or less...because ammo will be so rare it could even become tradable.
Bandits are not the problem in my opinion. Bandits rob you but they don´t kill you. People who "camp bambis" are another thing but I think it´s more of a community thing. I usually play in a team of 2 and we try to "clean" the server we are on and helping bambis/freshspawns with food so they can get energized easily. So far it works ok but if I see someone with a weapon I usually shoot him except it´s not a mosin/m4/sks and or the player has it shouldered. If you go in a group it´s less likely that you get just "shot down" on sight. But if you don´t want to see people you don´t have to. The amount of loot on the map is crazy and the people who kill others for fun&giggles are usually at the coast/airfields. I got shot 2 times now in 61hours of playing and I am always at the hotspots. I met a lot of funny people there a lot of "killers", once a bandit who robbed me but I don´t see a real problem with testing the game because of the players who shoot others. I agree that there is a bit too much ammunition though. A bit too much of everything kinda. I am running over the map being energized, hydrated and healthy all the time without carrying anything but some rice with me.
A good solution might be to connect the loot spawns (once added) to the amount of players. Like an empty server doesn´t spawn too much loot where a full server does spawn more loot. This way you have less server hopping and more interaction between the players. Put that together with the ability to communicate better, like using signs or "streetart" of some kind and we are able to better connect strangers. Once military weapons are less common people will think twice before engaging others because the engaged one might have someone covering him and so the attacker dies too. But right now you need ~1hour to be fully equipped with high tier gear so it´s not a problem to die and lose everything.
The "Bandit" character and player is a necessity otherwise us heroes would have no job. besides what do you think, if this happens for real that everyone will be friendly, especially since they have families etc etc, this is supposed to simulate real life in the event of a Zed apoc.
They have to stop the ability for the hackers or modders to make the ridiculous amounts of ammo stacks also I was playing today and found a guy who was a rather polite hacker that was helping me he dropped an ammo box with 14793.... amount of ammo in each slot which to me was amazing to see that he could even lift that amount of ammo. but the lower amounts of ammo would just cause a spike in the people attempting to gain more by server hopping, modding, or even killing others for their ammo.
@ARCHANGEL sorry about that but i agree with the suggestion.
The other thing is that if there are hackers (script modders) that are making large stacks of ammo then that does need to be fixed before the server hosts make a change like less ammo because there will still be server hoppers like you said but, someone will still find some area in the game to manipulate to get what they want so the hackers may be weeded out by beta if there is some way to detect the exact incident and the Battleye people can't catch every hacker at once.
Look, I completely agree with the argument that hackers are carrying to much ammo, but further limiting the current amounts of ammo spawns is not the way to go cause hackers will still have the ability to stack mass amounts of ammo. The current problem is that the servers need to restart in order for loot to re spawn and that causes all loot to spawn at once, thus large amounts of ammo, once we get to the point of loot spawns working and lots more players on a map all these problems will vanish, along with KOS.