Mental Health

[FieldMedic 7]

Anyone here ever play Amnesia: The Dark Descent? Excellent game. Probably the scariest experience I've ever had in a video game. Anyway in that title they make great use of the main character's mental health. Various things help calm you down and various things work to drive you off the deep end. As you start to lose it you begin to hallucinate!

Now, I personally think it would be an important aspect of survival to keep your wits about you. To that end I would suggest a mental health state to keep up or risk going crazy. Understandably, visual hallucinations might be tricky in ArmA but I don't see why certain audio files couldn't play if you start to lose it. Things like zombie growls, footsteps, distant gun shots etc. The game is already super tense and not being able to tell what's real and what isn't would make for quite an experience!

These effects would probably only be found in longer time survivors. New spawns would obviously take a while to experience any mental health issues, but a long string of traumatic events without a break could cause you to suffer poor mental health sooner.

Anyway that's my random thought for the evening. Probably not something in the cards for a while, if at all, but might be neat to see!

[kloust! 0]

+1 support

Maybe he could add another kind of sickness to the game, that causes you to hallucinate (hear things, like you were saying)

Or maybe that's what happens when you O/D on drugs?

[DemonGroover 8836]

There would definitely be some people who would go completely off the deep end. I think hallucinations would be a stretch for servers if everyone was going crazy. Maybe subtle things like you said, noises, footsteps things like that.

[SLASH-7 27]

This would be so damn scary. Alone in the woods at night hearing footsteps or zombies, i'd end up too stressed out to play haha.

[Zeromentor 169]

Not everyone has a mental break down due to zombies or murder. Just saying.

Mental health can already be seen ingame as players kill each other due to paranoia that the other player might attempt to harm them if they catch them. Many people that used to call, "FRIENDLY" as they neared another now fire on sight due to wrongs commited in the past.

But an illness for if you get too cold (IE sick) could provide one with hallucinations, or mindless gibbering.

[global420 0]

I was thinking along the same lines today (made txt file while site was down).

What if there was a depression/crazy meter (like the hidden bandit meter)? Meaning that the more you're alone and/or kill humans the more depressed/crazy you become. Have the player start to randomly hear zombie attacks, moans, screams, even foot steps and gun fire, ect (maybe your character mumbles to themselves and it can attract zombies).

To stop or decrease the madness, you need human contact. Team up with others (even bandits can team up together and still kill others without going insane) or maybe even find and drink whiskey for a temporary fix (Side Note: why not when after you eat/drink you get an empty can to replace what you just ate/drank).

[sparta436 46]

Since youre already emotionally connected to your character and your gear, i find this a bit uneccessary. Its like youre just punishing people for being alive for long amounts of time. We already have shock, which causes an adrenaline rush and makes your character to hyper-ventilate. I think we should find different ways to implement mental health rather than hallucinations. Perhaps we could add a system that involves how stressed your character is.

[ladybrecky 0]

1+ I love the idea of a psychotic break in Day Z. Far Cry 3 actually has a multiplayer streak where it drops bombs on your enemies and they see EVERYONE as evil looking demons so they end up teamkilling each other. I think something like that in Day Z would be awesome (Not the plane part obviously just the hallucination). Imagine being with a big group of people after a few days and you start hallucinating everyone as horrible monsters and them screaming/screeching at you, this would make for some VERY scary and paranoid gameplay.

[Zeromentor 169]

What about introverted, or hermit type people that dislike being near groups of others? Reclusive people ingame would also need another hidden bar that raises when they are near people (the stress of being near people) and goes down when they are alone.

Oh, and while we have that, we need the option to allow our character to be a sociopath or psychopath, so that murders take no toll on our mental level. After all, up to 4% of the population might be 'suffer' from anti-social personality disorders, and that'd need to be ingame as well.

And while we drop ideas in, I would like a urination bar, so my character needs to take a 3 minute break after downing sodas...

Or we can drop this idea. Next thing you know all players online would be suffering PTSD from a few ingame firefights...