Update to the Humanity System mechanics, DEVs Please take a look, thanks

[logan23 118]

This will be building on the Humanity System which is in the game now.

I believe that DayZ should be very brutal game to all game styles.

From "Psychology of killing" (Reference for system)

http://www.military-sf.com/Killing.htm

"Obsessional and Complusive States are like Conversion Hysteria except the soldier is more aware of what is going on. The soldier understands that fear is causing everything but he cannot do anything about it. This can be manifested by uncontrollable tremors, palpitations, stammers, tics and so on. After a while the trooper may find some kind of hysteria that allows him to escape psychic responsibility for the physical symptoms."

"Character Disorders are when a soldier becomes fixated on certain actions or things. Paranoia may include irascibility, depression and anxiety about his personal safety. Schizoids become hypersensitive and prefer to be alone. Epileptoid's become more prone to violent and sometimes unpredictable rages. Some become obsessed with religion and some become psychotic. In essence a person's very character has changed."

I designed the system to be like the Temp system…where you first lose/ decline in humanity which leads to the in system Heartbeat but if it drops to 0 (very low) and it’s been an amount of time in this state then you would get effects just like in the Temp system you get a cough/sick-lose blood.

Humanity needs to return to original starting level after each death. This will help balance variables and also not force players to play a certain style when they wish to change from a more protective shoot on site survivor to a wants to help out other survivors.

Let’s say for making numbers simple, we will use a 0-10 humanity number scale.

10= Start/full humanity

0= No Humanity

When a player kills another player-

Player is injured and returns fire and kills other player = -1 to Humanity scale

Player shoot other player and is not injured/hit during conflict = -2 to Humanity scale

Player shots player from great distance (snipers) and kills player = -3 to Humanity scale (The reason for snipering players gives a net larger lost in humanity is because they have the largest choice to not shoot and let a player go since they have the least amount of risk to them.)

As the player lowers their humanity, they start to hear the heart beat as it is in game now. But when your humanity =0 and it stays at 0 for let’s say 1 to 2 hours (these are place holder numbers) then like in the Temp system where you get a cold or shakes, while The Humanity system moves to a second level as well.

From my Reference material-

This second level of low humanity that is Humanity =0 for 1-2 hours would be:

The player would then hear gun shots, Zombie/infected voices, a gun reloading, sounds that would make a player un able to tell if it’s real or not without looking around. This would happen every so often. Script could do a get sound effect XYZ and play then do a random number = seconds/mins before another set of sounds are played again. The idea is to have it random and happen after a certain amount of time so the player will not be able to know this is from the low humanity. If the player’s water/food levels are low then this also could trigger a more constant cycle of sounds in a shorter cycle of time. This would continue until you up your Humanity to 1.

(I’m right now against adding tremors or tics to this system since it more heavily puts a burden on the player, rather it be subtle like the temp system.)

Now with this system you need a way to bring back humanity in a way that can’t be exploited but team of players.

To gain back humanity just like in the Temp System, we could make a new item that would be the antibiotics for Low Humanity.

This item could be some pills or a shot of something. (It should not be the in game pain killers because you will have players with low humanity hunting newly spawn players since they have no gun and pain killers) This should be a new item.

This item/pills/drug would only bump you from 0 humanity to 1. This means the condition could return if you kill again. To solve this from being always on the edge there needs to be a way to raise Humanity in general.

If you can script for giving blood transfusions or bandages to increase humanity but do a check so that it only raises it if it’s a different player you bandaging or to only allow players to raise from bandage ever so many minutes. And even then it should be adding only 1 to the humanity scale.

I can see humanity being raised with mechanics built around building a society and settlements. This system I’m laying out might be something that can be placed in when those side missions and building a settlement/society is ready to be implemented into DayZ.

In the end with this system I laid out you could lose your humanity get the 2nd level side effects and remove them plus work your way back to original humanity level.

This a rough but it's meant to show the scars of killing. This no more punishing then standing out in the rain at night, which will get you sick/cold. Both mechanics have ways to remove the conditions plus they are subtle and aimed to bring the mental state of person in this environment.

Tried to place it in a more script/feature mechanics so Devs can take a look at it.

Food for thought,

Let me know what you think.