Feedback on status of infectious diseases in DayZ

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

@badbenson

This is probably where "learnable skills" per life could play a part.

If you don't want to have to learn all your survival skills again, you REALLY don't want to die.

Suiciders/dead-all-the-timers should be lacking in knowledge that is necessary.

If they only PvP they put themselves at a disadvantage. They will (predictably) be near spawn, so they can be avoided if KoS is their whole game.

EDIT: also, global casuality

Edited November 21, 2012 by Chabowski

[dallas 5195]

I hope suicide comes with a major debuff.

I hope death will become more punishing in the standalone, where people who are detected spamming suicide is punished, rather than rewarded. It makes no sense in a survival oriented game, to have people committing suicide to gain advantages or better spawns.

[rocket 16567]

Suicide because you're infected, so you can run and pickup your gear - is rather stupid. Because your gear and body will be infected.

[dallas 5195]

Oh no, you didn't!? :)

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

Oh yes he did! Rare parka, you tease...

Edited November 21, 2012 by Fraggle

[SmashT 10907]

That's a great solution actually.

[Heiduk 265]

Is Cipro about to replace beans as the survivor's best friend?

Oh yes, I hope so.

[dallas 5195]

I think I'll set up a combined medical facility/trade station. Selling expensive medical services and handing out free blankets and glass pearls.

Edited November 21, 2012 by Dallas

[badbenson (DayZ) 38]

so I don't think suicide will be as much an issue as folks here make out - especially when you just found that rare parka and some nightvision...

i don't see how this makes sense with regards to the "tactics" most people already use to preserve their gear. then again. if a character becomes more than just a temporary hull and surviving longer will actually have benefits i see this becoming very intresting.

It gives the most tangible reason of all for wanting to group up formally - the ability to make your world habitable for longterm habitation.

so basicly we're gonna see server after server being totally infested with diseased dead bodies and when there's no server left to go to there will be a major wipe of everything. and then there will be the new times of sharing and looking after eachother and veterans will tell new players about the dark times. and civilization will rise again. and when the new players will ask where to get a gun the veterans will just smile and send them to collect medical herbs in the forest.

just kidding. :D

i just hope the whole system will carry something like this and not totally rely on players to make it work. i know that's the main vision here but i'm just not that idealistic about people's behaviour in a game. every loophole will be used...

anyways i'm sure you guys have thought this through and i'm now looking forward to the standalone much more.

EDIT:

Suicide because you're infected, so you can run and pickup your gear - is rather stupid. Because your gear and body will be infected.

lol omg. if you go full on with this then all my concerns are wiped.

Edited November 21, 2012 by badbenson

[Gordon Axeman 191]

That's impressive... But a bit too strong.

[Shadow Man 142]

Sounds fantastic. But I have to agree with badbenson and riggsuk. The problem is that no one puts any thought into dying, its no big deal. For me that cant be right. Even if it them ages to gear up, they don't think twice about attacking someone and risking it all. They just respawn and go to all the usual places to find gear again. I don't know how you make people value their characters life without ruining the freedom they have. I hear the phrase "Don't get attached to your gear" alot. The whole point is we're meant to! I'd like to see average life span alot higher.

Sorry loads of posts while I was typing :s

Edited November 21, 2012 by Shadow Man

[badbenson (DayZ) 38]

i think in general the whole thing being based around loot is kinda boring anyways. it's great that this is steering the focus somewhere else. although i hope this isn't just a twisted way of trying to keep people from killing eachother.

[vacalouca 86]

That's impressive... But a bit too strong.

Only the strong survive DayZ.

[Leadon77 94]

Interesting take on survival. Disease's will just cause one more area of paranoia amongst survivors. It's going to be fun trying to find everything and stay alive. And with the random water/food sources etc being contaminated do you trust that canteen you just found on that body...how bout the jacket you found laying in a house. I see people setting traps by leaving infected items laying in loot areas for people to grab....

[sarge11111 22]

what about protective/preventative measures?

gloves, masks, anti-bacterial cleaners(etc.). can this be an option?

being able to burn the dead would work or would hiding a body be sufficient?

just thinking about the lone-wolfs out there that can't give themselves blood transfusions.

[rpatto92@hotmail.com 26]

I'll try to give more detail soon, but the major routes of transmission are waterways, contamination of food, blood-to-blood (e.g. during melee), infected clothing off fresh kill, and so forth.

Suicide because you're infected, so you can run and pickup your gear - is rather stupid. Because your gear and body will be infected.

If you're going to go into such detail; then symptoms, treatments and tests for these diseases need to play a major part; not just on a level of detection, symptoms and treatment in humans/players but also in materials and resources in which they're found. So that means, things like: various testing kits or tool (for the purpose of testing and treating items on bodies you find), bleaches and detergents (to allow you to clean weapons, implements and bleach unwashed cloths to clean them), also simply plastic bags and duck tape would an amazing tool (allowing you to store hazardous items you find until being able to treat them).

If you're going to go as far to provide methods of treatment for infected players; you need to provide methods of prevention, that out reaches that of just vaccines.

[Erizid 56]

I was totally on board with the "Suicide to cure diseases" criticism.

Then my world got Rocke(t)d.

Your body will be infected.

Your old items will be infected.

You are not prepared...

[Sutinen 635]

Will crawling in dirt/grass get you cold when it's raining?

[logan23 118]

Sounds fantastic. But I have to agree with badbenson and riggsuk. The problem is that no one puts any thought into dying, its no big deal. For me that cant be right. Even if it them ages to gear up, they don't think twice about attacking someone and risking it all. They just respawn and go to all the usual places to find gear again. I don't know how you make people value their characters life without ruining the freedom they have. I hear the phrase "Don't get attached to your gear" alot. The whole point is we're meant to! I'd like to see average life span alot higher.

Sorry loads of posts while I was typing :s

I think Rocket is getting at is-

You will be Valuing Your Server's Life/World,

Player will respawn and and run and get their gear but as Rocket said earlier, there is still disease on your gear/and former body.

As time you will see players constantly falling ill and having these diseases killing or hindering the players where the only options are to deal with the complications of the sickness or seek out ways to get medications out there so you and future spawns will have a chance to survive.

I might be wrong but this might hint to no server hopping. If you can't server hope to another to pick up medication, then you are forced by the situation to get medication access on your server/world.

Players finding ways to cure/treat disease is helpful for the individual and the society/server.

I really like the idea, Rocket =)

DayZ is going to hard but very it will create an experience not found in games or not very often.

Side note:

I can imagine the sniper who is on Cherno who has been shooting players with not purpose other then grief,...send out on the radio...Hey guys i could use some medication for this disease, I'm vomiting and dehydrating..need some water..anyone???? (crickets)

You might have sniper rifle and have 40 kills but only to die of dehydration and vomiting with the shakes,..not the way you think you would go verse a blaze of gun fire/glory. (maybe you need to reach out for some allies?)

[teih 36]

With more focus on survival (FANTASTIC), and the punishment for dying increasing, there needs to be more motivation for cooperation. If two strangers meet eachother in-game, one of them are going to get killed. It's uninteresting, it kills the immersion, and to be perfectly honest it's starting to get rather boring camping out in the woods, avoiding every soul I see.

[Bludy 324]

Suicide because you're infected, so you can run and pickup your gear - is rather stupid. Because your gear and body will be infected.

this is so good, so tasty

[logan23 118]

I Feel there will be TEARS.....and not just from the disease...

[Heiduk 265]

Based on my systems tests so far, Cholera is going to be a major, major killer. An outbreak of Cholera on a server could well trigger a huge number of deaths. If you find a cache with a Cholera vaccine, you will be able to make yourself a very rich person.

After thinking about this for a while I really hope that prevention comes down to more than just finding the right medical loot. Taking Cholera for example, prevention is pretty simple. If you: boil your water, wash your hands, and cook your food your likelihood of being infected, even in the middle of an outbreak, is pretty small. Are players given the tools to do these things?

In the mod, although matches may not be rare they are certainly uncommon, much more uncommon than I would expect in any developed country that has just collapsed, not to mention the many other ways to start a fire in the real world. I don't think I've ever had a character who found matches before they needed to drink and usually I have one or more military grade weapons before I have matches. I assume that there has been significant loot rebalancing so hopefully this has already been considered.

I've realized that one of the things I really like about DayZ is the reasons that I die. In most cases, it's not because of one mistake or one bad decision, usually it is a series of small mistakes that keep adding up until I'm in a situation I can't recover from. For as bare-bones as the current game is that is pretty bloody authentic. Adding the disease factor has the potential to greatly increase the game's depth, I just hope it doesn't become a series of quests for various elixirs of immunity and healing potions.

[kosh 5]

This will be a huge cultural and behavioural shock for the playerbase to have to cope with. The potential for blowing open an entire genre is pretty epic with how this could work - and be tracked and reported, that would be absolutely fascinating (and better happen)...if Rocket thinks he has interview request issues now.. lol.

Some thoughts:

Suicide because you're infected, so you can run and pickup your gear - is rather stupid. Because your gear and body will be infected.

Gameplay-wise, I agree with this. But I have to call you out on this because I know you know the facts better! Diseases do not survive within a corpse for very long, the article you linked to on Redit quoted I believe it was the UN as calling it a "negligible" factor. Just wondering your thoughts on this, as I was planning on asking how this impacts the infected in the game (since they are 'infected' as opposed to walking corpses; ie can they also be carriers). Again for gameplay reasons, ie suicide, I can easily let this slide but I'm just curious :) (EDIT: I should add for clarity, a disease wouldn't survive on an item for long either if it doesn't find a host to survive in.)

Skills/traits - possibilities for things like being able to more easily identify infected people, bad food/water sources? Depends how the whole system works of course. The diference between a good doc and a bad doc could be pretty drastic... I wonder if consuming the wrong type of meds for what you have would make you worse off..?

Medical pamphlets - hastily made printouts covering the basics of the most common infections (as from the whole zombie thing) occurring before the complete collapse of civilization that the player can find? maybe piece together? not sure how much I like that myself to be honest yet, but not sure I like having to alt tab into wikipedia all the time either. I like my immersion :P

Keep up the great work!

Edited November 21, 2012 by Kosh401

[Walter.ua 1]

This is intriguing to say the least.

You could even add the option of farm animals or critters as additional factor of disease spread/disease reservoir for anthrax and bubonic plague respectively or what not.

My guess you are having an outbreak from military or CDC-kind installation in the way you envision diversity of infectious diseases... Simply too much rare shit broke loose.

But this major implementation also has some worrisome sides. As a medical resident I have serious concerns about the very possibility of curing some of the above mentioned on background of total social havoc and deterioration.

Rocket, you seem to be pursuing realism and that is just fine.

But I doubt that cholera could be treated without constant and extensive crystalline infusions under monitoring vital parameters/functions. I doubt that you could treat B, C or B-D hepatitis without repeatable and protracted course of highly specified immunoglobulin injections over period of several months (and most drugs that you use in such instances require special storage conditions which, if not kept properly, will be of no use or become a direct threat to your health)

I doubt that you can treat typhoid complications of perforating ulcers in intestine walls without the assistance of operating crew in well equipped operating room, and etc, etc...

Simply put, if you add so many different complicated disorders and still claim that you pursue realism - there are a lot of additional factors to consider and recognize.

In other words, many of those things you claim to implement will turn player into slumbering exhausted body struggling to crawl in any direction and recognize anything through blurred vision. And the only option to save them from practically inevitable death would be highly specialized medical assistance. Randomly consuming even broad spectrum antibiotics won't help if you are already in one of the abovementioned fully developed conditions.

Obviously such professional help would not be available in Chernarus... We all know hospitals will be decimated first when all the shit gets real =)

Still, my guess is you should diversify the variety of drugs (and assistance options?) even more if you are taking that route, so that you could picture treatment in war-like conditions as more or less plausible.

I haven't seen anyone add medical conditions into such game environment so far.

Anyhow I like what you are doing, I just want to emphasize that this is a very intricate and broad area you are stepping in.

I wish some of my insights prove to be useful to your work.

P.S. Hope B/C hepatitis is spread by blood transfusion the way you envision it. I guess that is the best possible option and pretty darn realistic as that's how it actually happens in most cases. Even though I am skeptical of possibility of prolonged whole blood/RBC storage, which is basically impossible, especially in field condtions(!), other blood products could be a source of parenteral infection, such as fresh frozen plasma. Which leads me to thinking that it requires freezer to be stored and that on its own requires electricity... and power cutoff is sort of instant in case of you-know-what... hospital generators? Won't last long. As I said before.. oh so many variables =)

Edited November 21, 2012 by Walter.ua