Drostan

So, back to the original topic. DO WE NEED a mechanic to simulate a character's mental stress, or is this already simulated by the player themselves, feeling the slight pangs of remorse and self-preservation that they do?

From what I've gathered we all seem to roughly agree on a few points. 1. Highly trained/physically capable people are obviously more likely to survive the situation at hand. 2. Psychology is smart people shit. We have difficulty fully agreeing on these aspects: 1. How people would really behave in such a high-stress situation. 2a. Should there be a mechanic representing a character's psychological condition. 2b. If so, how would it be represented. We're starting to move off the psychological topic, and devolving into how various militaries will deal with it, how it's started and so on. That in itself is an entire discussion warranting it's own thread.

Also I think it should be noted, for the purpose of this thread that PTSD is POST traumatic stress disorder. I believe the game world itself is taking place during the traumatic stress, and that people would only exhibit PTSD after the zombie outbreak is defeated. I agree with you. My point wasn't necesarily about a soldier's PTSD, it was just that it's not fully understood. This thread is cycling too fast to keep up with.

That case was the mass suicide incident, where several hundred people drank poisoned suicide to die and move on to the afterlife he promised. YOU SIR are terrible at this.

I didn't want to fill the page with quotes, I apologize if I took too much context out, but hunger, thirst, and even illness are rather simple biological factors, that are largely understood by science today. (Keep in mind that not having a cure for sickness doesn't mean it's not understood) However psychology is an unfathomably complex system that is not fully understood, and vastly different in every human being. The psychological state of each individual person varies greatly, and is affected by both cause/effect, as well as genetics. An argument you pose appears to be that the 17% of our population being bandits is entirely composed of sociopaths, which is simply not the case. A gas-station robber isn't necesarily a sociopath. -------------------------------- In reply to rukqoa - It is also surmised that soldiers undergo this negative psychological impact, because they're expected to reintigrate into a society that both looks down upon, and scorns soldiers and the killing they perform. They do what is natural, only to be shunned by the society they need to go back in to. So again, the human mind is so complex that any simple one-cause/one-effect mechanic representing this psyche is almost insulting to the psychological community. I'm torn. On one hand, I thought the bandit-skinning was a good enough way to discourage rampant player killing, so you had to be tactical about it. But at the same time it's not logical to have a visual representation of a murderer. I think it should be left as is. Give the game some more time to evolve before we consider anti-pvp measures.

Actually I find it quite logical that in a survival situation(ultimately what the zombie apocalypse is) that people will and do tend to band together in order to survive. Also, a good example of a high-stress survival situation that may provide a decent analogue to the psychological area of this discussion. When the titanic sank, people only filled the boats to(I'm not sure on this number, it's roundabout) about 30% of their capacity, and many of the upper-class passengers refused to allow the poorer passengers into their life boats. They became greedy and self-serving, only looking to their own survival. On the upside, a decent portion of the passengers and crew DID try to pull as many people out of the water as possible.

Also keep in mind that some people, in times of extreme stress/prejudice/opposition will truly snap, band together, and be ruthless monsters. (bandits) It's entirely likely that out of the people that are physically strong enough to survive the zombie apocalypse we've been presented with, a good 17% could be the ones that snap and kill everything. I personally see no need to implement a psychological mechanic, because that's the one thing in survival that is not concrete. There is no way to accurately guess how anyone would respond to a high-stress situation. I do agree that there needs to be a mechanic to at least slightly discourage excessive player killing, because it's simply not fun to be sneaking tactically through a town, only to have a CZ round embedded in your skull. I've been on both ends of the banditry fight. I've been a survivor helping people, and I've been a bandit killing people. Some people enjoy getting into character and roleplaying how their character would be. No one enjoys having dictated to them how their character thinks and responds, psychologically.

Sociopaths (In times of yore called psychopaths) are considered, from an evolutionary psychological point of view to be societal parasites, where not valuing human life is integral to their own survival. They instinctively need to lie, steal, cheat, and even kill, to further their own needs and goals. In a survival scenario, this would prevent them from having an excessive mental load, and allow them to focus more on survival. Keep in mind, even the most expansive studies on Sociopathy have said that it is impossible to tell how many members of society are sociopaths, given their ability to lie with ease. Many people currently are so domesticated by society, the comfort of not having to fight to survive, that they absolutely will not take another human's life, even if it means saving their own(myself included) Many of these people will be completely unable to adapt to a survival situation, and will probably get eaten by zombies or shot up by bandits. Reason would suggest that the majority of people surviving a significant period in a zombie apocalypse would have some sort of coping mechanism, relating to killing another human being. It can also be reasoned that many of the "bandits" are simply people that have completely lost their minds, and simply go around killing and surviving. Edit: Also, games would not be fun without PvP. Otherwise we'd just be facing simple, mindless AI.