cjmelendez_
I don’t want to be the bad guy; it feels wrong, dirty, and just … slimy to take advantage of people who are weaker than me – whether through their gullibility or their comparatively weaker gear. DayZ is a game where we all need to be the bad guy sometimes, unfortunately. I’ve known that for a while but those actions don’t come easy to me. It’s a conflicting gameplay element rooted in the diversity of the game’s community: with anonymity comes primal id desires for evil and selfishness, or even just fierce self preservation.
This is truly a game where you can’t trust anyone, not even your own sense of morality. Today’s Chernarus Log is how a series of betrayals is shifting my play-style toward the darkside.
My friend Tim and I had taken to the experimental servers to play around with the new additions and eventually acquire some guns so that we could no longer be powerless and at the mercy (more like the absence of mercy) of bandits. The trend in the experimental servers seemed to be one where a few players would quickly gather guns after a server reset and then shoot any and all new players on sight. Why? I can’t answer that question. Kill on sight players annoy me; it’s not because I don’t want to die, but because it’s so uncreative to kill on sight. At least capture me, take my blood, say stupid things, and then kill me. That’s more fun than being some quite, anonymous killer.
Anyway, so Tim and I went from Berenzino to Svetlojarsk. We grabbed what food we could, which ended up being way more than I expected from just these two cities on such a populated server. I was stock full of cans and even a bag of rice. I had food to spare along with Mosin ammo – minus a Mosin. All in all, we were pretty well off.
After leaving Svetlojarsk due to the poor framerate, we ended up in a small settlement to the west; a series of less than a dozen houses along one straight street. From here, we had a direct path to the North East Airfield. And that is where we went.
At first the airstrip seemed to have been raided; doors were already open and we found no food. But then we stumbled upon two rifles in a hanger: a Mosin and an SKS. I equipped the Mosin – now having a use for my ammo. It even came pre-camouflaged! Nice. From the hanger, we cleared the jail and moved toward the nearest bushes to log out.
A day later we both got back on the game and resumed from that position. Control tower: clear. Hanger: clear. Tim went ahead to open the jail doors and he was immediately shot from within. We retreated and had a length discussion with the guy inside. Tim wanted to kill him, but I didn’t. Misunderstandings happen. This is a high anxiety game. I tried to convey that we didn’t want a firefight but we’d be willing to bring one if he didn’t prove his friendliness. We were at a stalemate. Then Tim fell over after being shot.
Someone down near the hangars shot Tim. I was left alone. I had no clue whether it was an orchestrated attack or if a random person had arrived to the airfield and had an itchy trigger finger. I warned the guy in the jailhouse that someone shot Tim, and that if it was him or his friend, “we” (bluffing that we had a larger team than we did) would come into his building and take him down. Again, I still didn’t want to kill him without evidence. He sounded audibly nervous about the prospect of not one, but two potential hostiles in his area. I believed him.
To my right I saw a blue figure. Another player – no doubt the one that took down Tim – approached me from a distance, raising his gun to take a shot. I got nervous and fumbled with my keyboard but managed to get in front of the building, creating a barrier between myself and him. I told the guy in the jail that I was coming in and that we were being attacked! He let me in, gave me time to close the front door, and then shot me. It was all a ruse. My kindness was betrayed.
I see now why players shoot on sight. I don’t want to be like that, but more and more it seems like I have to in order to survive. This is the darkside of DayZ – the tempting call to kill without mercy or prejudice. No one can be trusted, not even my own sense of morality.
