Rising realism and difficulty(?) regarding health system while being easy to implement

[BLKCandy 12]

Hardship and Struggle!

Admit it, without other player, the game is pretty much a walk in the park after you get the hang of it. And the player kill other player not because they really need what in their bag, but mostly because either ‘Ooou! Shiny gun’ or ‘Killing is fun’.

'So here are some ideas of how to rise the pressure for survival from the game itself (Hardships) increasing its 'Hyper Realistic' even more and a idea to balance it. (Struggle!)

(I know they already discuss this, but I want to suggest some ideas that improve the 'realistic' feeling while not being too much difficult to implement and not a pain for new comers who doesn't used to hyper realism game)

'Health'

The fact is: human are fragile. But survivors in DayZ are super human! (If you exclude their sluggish movement) They can run a marathon at night in rain and took hell of a beating from zombies and then walk away just fine with a simple heat pack and some steaks. So here are some idea regarding health:

Healing: Instant healing take away all the pressure from fear of getting yourself hurts as long as you have the healing items in the back, so:

Hardship: Remove the instant healing function! No more munching steaks and jump back to the fight!

Balancing: Health regenerates over time in relative to ‘nutrition’, ‘hydration’ and a new variable ‘healing’. Gain ‘nutrition’ and ‘hydration’ by eating and drinking, gain ‘healing’ by taking healing items! (Meds, herbs, special food, whatever!)

Pros: More realistic (?), Health always gain over time so you will no longer need healing item to heal a scratch, make keeping yourself full and hydrated more useful. Put some pressure to not get hurt (not badly at least), And no more eating stakes buffet and back to the fight in twenty seconds.

Cons: Player will have to wait to heal, Player may waste healing items by using them more than needed (But from the example formula, they would be healing faster though)

Example formula: (Health gain per second) = (A)(Nutrition %) + (B ) (Hydration %) + (Healing function)| When A and B is a constant number to determind the size of the effect from food and drinks, nutrition and hydration is a percentage of current nutrition and hydration, and healing is another function (Example: Healing function = 10*(100+'Healing')/100) to determind the effect of healing item. This regeneration formula ‘A,B’ and ‘Healing function’ must be calculated, set and tested carefully to balance this regeneration function (Example: setting ‘A,B’ to very low will reduce natural regeneration, setting the healing function higher will rise the effects of healing items, etc.).

Fatigue, Illness and infection: Zombies apocalypse is not really scary without infection and illness. They are scary because everyone can turn into a Zs! But right now it is really hard to get an illness and infection. Here is the idea.

Hardship: Poor health, nutrition, hydration and environments(Wet/Cold place/being near sick people or zombie, etc.) will rise the new variable ‘fatigue’ over time. Fatigue will reduce the stamina and speed making survivor run slower and get tired faster (Getting tired cause survivor to breath heavily, hands shacking, etc. as in the current mod) more fatigue mean less speed and stamina, once the fatigue exceed the thresholdsurvivor starts to get ill they will slightly coughing which will rise the fatigue of everyone near by (Spreading the illness), their hand will always shake a little and because the high 'fatigue' variable they will be slower and tired faster, and if the 'fatigue' exceed the 2nd threshold, survivor will get 'infection', loosing health faster, coughing louder and more often spreading the 'fatigue' even more, they may suddenly feel dizzy(Shortly loss visual and hearing, unable to perform fast movement), and once this 'fatigue' exceed the 3rd threshold, the survivor will die and turn into zombie shortly after dead. Also all dead survivor should turn into a zombie sometime after dead unless somebody properly dispose of the body.

Balancing: Good health, nutrition, hydration, environment(Warm/Dry Place) and 'healing' (Refer to 'healing' concept above) will also reduce the fatigue overtime. So no more rushing into Cherno just to cure a simple cold.

Pros: More realistic(?), No longer need meds to cure a simple illness (Though meds will help a lot). More pressure to take better care of yourself. More pressure to avoid the rain (even if you keep the fatigue below the illness threshold, you would still suffer speed and stimina penalty).

Cons: In real play, it would be very easy to build up fatigue, thus suffer the penalty, thus might be a pain to take care of a survivor (But that's the point!) More time would be needed to take care of your survivor, thus less time to do 'action' stuff which the player would like to do like raiding, kidnapping, airfield loot, etc.

Example formula: (Fatigue change per second) = (A)(a - health ) + (B )(b - nutrition) + ©(c - hydration) + (Environment function) - (Healing function)| When A,B,C are constant numbers to set the scale of the effect from health, nutrition and hydration, a,b,c are minimum level of health, nutrition, hydration before start to gain fatigue, and enivironment(Body temp, environment temp, wet/dry, etc) and healing are well... functions to determind the effect of them.

Low health effect: No one could run or fight at 100% when they are wounded, there are already some in the mod, but lets take it even further! (More pain for you wounded!)

Hardship:

Sudden pain: Once the health has been reduced to a curtain level, the survivor may suddenly feel pain from their wounds when they start moving, stop moving, rise weapon, or do any other actions, causing them to grunt (Simply just to tell the player that they are in pain), drop their stance (lower their weapon, or pause their action) for a very short time and unable to do fast movement for a short time.

Sudden daze: Once the health has been reduced to a certain level, survivor may feel dizzy from time to time, causing them to drop their stance, loss visual(Vision darken) and hearing and unable to perform fast movement for a short period of time.

Balancing?: None really, just make sure the effects suggested were done in a reasonable way, otherwise in may be too much of a pain for the wounded player

Pros: More pressure into not getting wounded, more intense feeling once you got wounded to that level. They are just a small extra for the mood.

Cons: They simply make the game harder, with nothing to balance it out, comparing to the current game.

MORE TO COME! I'm thinking about how to improve the food and drinks stuff.

Edited December 24, 2012 by BLKCandy

[Farkinob 19]

I would like this idea if the zombies weren't laggy, jittery, and slower. It's a pain in the ass trying to destroy/flee a zombie that can run just as fast as you, if not faster; even though they're supposed to be decayed...

[rossums 2190]

Most of this is set to be implemented in the standalone.

The combat system is going to be balanced around the zombies (Who are actually going to be a threat rather than an annoyance).

There will be multiple 'types' of zombies brought on by a zombie life cycle, older ones will be slower, sluggish whereas the younger ones will be much faster.

They are adding a full 'disease/infection' system which can be easily spread depending on the infection, there will be multiple types with multiple side affects, your player will need to remain well fed and hydrated to increase chances of survival and lessen the symptoms.

They also want to add a system where certain limbs can be disabled making it impossible to walk at full speed or without a limp, also to make it hard to fire guns with a single arm, etc.

This will add various medical items like splints (This was the only one discussed by Rocket) which will allow you to temporarily walk a little faster but you must get proper medical care soon or risk bad infection/death/loss of limbs.

Edited December 24, 2012 by Rossums

[BLKCandy 12]

Yes I have heard of that, but I don't know the detail though.

But from what I heard they sounds complicated and I fear it might takes too much resources to be implemented at first released. So I suggest some similar idea involving only some messing with variables which should be easy to implement, while not being overly realistic and scare off someone who doesn't really appreciated 'Hyper realistic' type of game.