PLEASE read all of it before posting a comment! I really appreciate your attention! Also please even if you like it or not, write a comment saying why, since could be helpfull in developing a solution to KoS as also as making an enjoyable feature to every player with your collaboration.
KILLING ON SIGHT:
Now, this idea comes to me because there's a problem going on in the game called KoS. WAIT! Before posting anything right now, let me specify why I'm calling this a problem! I think killing on sight could be classified in two types: Good KoS, and Bad Kos... I'll try to explain both of them through some examples.
GOOD KOS:
-Player: I've been looting for hours in this game, gearing myself and finally I'm getting somewhere in this game, I've got a gun and I've survived even though I've found some people that have tried to steal me and even kill me.
*Player spotted in the distance better geared and doesn't seem so friendly*
-He doesn't know I'm here, I could try to talk to him, but I have the chance of getting killed. Maybe I should kill him right now that he doesn't know I'm here. I really don't wanna die, so I wont take any chances...
BAD KOS:
-Player: Alright, I've geared myself up with everything I can in an empty server, I have my mosin and my large scope... Lets enter a full server, hide on a mountain and shoot EVERYONE I see :D...
Maybe you're trying to get me now. I've been modifying this issue A LOT considering everything you say to me, so that we could develop a feature that could be both interesting and force bad players to get consecuences of killing for no reason AT ALL without spoling good players game.
Some things have been developed to give people a reason for not killing on sight, like objects damage, but in my example, we will see that this will not change anything for someone that has already looted everything they needed to play bad.
Now I may present the Guilt / Paranoia state...
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Guilt / Paranoia state:
In real life, people who kill someone or have been part of a war actually suffer mental dissorder like depression Paranoia that could drive this people crazy.
Looking at the issues I found that sometimes you can listen random zombie sounds or can openings when there's no such thing as a zombie or player near to you.
This gives me an idea, and it may be simple to apply as a programmer. When people start to kill, they will enter a "guilt" state that can raise depending on the number of murders. This guilt can be shown during gameplay as random sounds of someone walking, someone opening a can or reloading a gun. Maybe even a random sound of shots (Obviously in an extreme case of constant murdering) that only the player can hear, because of guilt.
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Paranoia and guilt would be two different things.
PARANOIA:
Paranoia wouldn't stay all the time, as it would decay over time actually kind of fast. This is something I wrote on a comment but people aren't reading it. So paranoia would decay, meaning that if you kill someone, you'll only hear things for a short period of time, and it's not frequent, so that it doesn't spoils gameplay alot, just give a scare sometimes.
GUILT:
Guilt also raises when you kill someone, but the difference is that it would decay alot slower compared to paranoia. Guilt alters the quantity of paranoia you have, meaning that if you have high Guilt but paranoia is already empty, if you kill someone else, your paranoia will be alot higher than before.
This guilt state can get lowered when acting as a hero like donating blood or helping someone, maybe reanimating, suministrating epi-pens or morphine, or just not killing someone for a period of time.
Also, if you reach the point of bandit, your guilt will decay much faster because you've become familiar with murdering.
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MURDER IN SELF DEFENSE?
That one is hard,and its actually being discussed right now in the comments. For now there are two options:
1)Nothing should change, since you're still killing someone, ending a life and even though that could be self defense, you would still feel guilty for his death. Also because it's REALLY hard for the game to realize if it was either murder or self defense.
2)Negative Guilt: As we talked before, there are ways to lower your guilt like helping people and cooperating with others, but what happens if you have no guilt and still help and cooperate? Well then you would start developing what I call negative guilt. This means your guilt is lower than 0, and if you reach certain point of negative guilt, you would be actually able to kill someone without gaining any paranoia, or raising your guilt above 0.
This subject is still being discussed, if you like one of those or have another idea to solve this, please say it in the comments.
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I don't know, it may be fun and may cause more horror to the game and lower the rates of killing on sight.
Edit: As I remember, the mod had something similar called "humanity" which defined if you were wether a hero or a bandit. My idea is just implementing something that can change gameplay because of humanity
The conclusion we ended up having is that we ,ust wait and see how the game develops the sruviving aspects, because for now there's nothing to do in the game after you gear up, leading to bored people to kill everyone. Still, if you think this concept may be good or not, vote, maybe one day the developers will see this and depending on the rates they would think about adding this. I'm not hoping to get this idea in the game just because I like it, but I want everyone to have the chance to choose if qould be something enjoyable or not.