I think that there are currently three different types of bandits:
- Those who kill because they wan't other peoples' gear
- Those who kill because they don't want to get killed themselves
- Those who kill people for the fun of it
I'm totally fine with type 1, it's part of the game and I won't complain about them. I very much despise the third type, because they simply make the game a bad experience for many people, and I think that type 2 is actually, at least in part, a result of the existence of type 3. Let me explain:
Whenever somebody gets killed by someone else, they will get (at least a little) upset, especially when you didn't have anything worth killing for. Given that this happens most of the time (getting killed for nothing), people get paranoid and kill everyone on sight because they are tired of getting killed all the time. The reason bandits can go around killing everyone on sight is because they don't have anything to fear. They remain completely anonymous.
This problem won't be solved by displaying who's near you in the name list, because there might be many players around you. I think that the only way to tackle this problem is to display the name of the person who killed you in the "You are dead" screen. This way, people will think twice about killing someone, because every time they do, another person will be mad at not some anonymous bandit, but a very specific character. I am aware that this won't work as well in the Alpha, because people are less reluctant to simply create a disposable character and then delete it again. However, with the experience system in place, people won't be so quick to delete a character, I think. In combination with a gameworld where nametags are enabled, this will provide a very reliable way of determining who you can trust. Not that the anonymity problem won't go away... An example of user generated missions was to put a bounty on somebodies head, but how would you do that if you have no clue what that person's name is?
Along with it, the text a person wrote in chat should also be displayed above that person. Otherwise it is impossible to tell if the person you see is responding to your proximity chat, or someone else who also happens to be nearby is. For example, if you ask "Friendly?" in a village or city, probably three or more players will respond, and you have no way of knowing if the guy you are seeing is friendly (or says so). In real-life I'd be also able to tell if the person right in front of me says something, or if somebody else a block away yells something...