Some thoughts regarding injury and sickness

[bfisher 561]

I picked up another survival game called "This War of Mine", which presents a fairly dark and realistic scenario of a group of civilians trying to survive in a besieged city.  One of the things that struck me was how the progressive nature of diseases and injuries forced you to make difficult choices.  Like whether you should even try to help a character or if you would be better off saving the food and medicine for someone with a better chance of recovery.  And the worse shape your characters are in, the worse they perform.

 

 

That's one thing I think is missing from DayZ.  Having to deal with injuries and sickness getting worse over time without proper medicine, water, food and rest.  In the Mod, provide you weren't killed outright, a couple of shots from an AK-47 could be fixed in 2 minutes by a single bandage and eating a cow.  Maybe a shot of painkillers to eliminate the shakes.  A broken leg could be healed instantly with a shot of morphine or now a splint.  One blood pack and your good as new.

 

One thing the Mod did well was when you caught an infection from a zombie.  You wouldn't get better without antibiotics and your condition would continue to noticeably worsen. That was the one form of medical ailment where you actually felt some desperation that your character was doomed and there was little you would be able to do about it without help.

 

 

So my suggestion is for DayZ to move away from any form of instant or near-instant healing.  Certainly we don't want players literally bedridden for months because that's not fun either.  And I do know that the developers have disease in the works and that early versions of the game showed characters limping around.  But here are my suggestions:

 

* Healing should take a LONG time (at least in game time).  Bandages and blood bags will keep you from dying, but you should still have to ease up for awhile. 

* A split should just let you not have to crawl.  But you should still be limping around for some period of game time until the bone heals. 

* Maybe even permanently lose use of a limb if the injury is severe enough.  It's not like Cherno Hospital has a working orthoscopic surgery practice.

* When and if alcohol and antibiotics work, they will be necessary to not get an infection which will only get worse and may require multiple treatments.

* For severe injuries, bandages might need changing every so often to avoid infection.

* More indicators of players health (besides text messages).  The shakes, the blurries, the fading vision, the coughing and vomiting, limping, reduced speed and stamina. 

* Addiction.  Take enough painkillers and you have to keep taking them or the shakes return.  Or you an opt for a painful period of withdrawal.

* Sometimes people get sick for no reason.  You can do everything right, but still catch pneumonia or an appendicitis.

* Sometimes people just don't get better. 

 

 

I'm sure many of these are already in the works, but think of it this way.  The way it works now in the Mod / SA, when you get sick or injured, your friends are like "quick! give him a blood bag! / bandage / meat / etc!" so you can get back in the fight.  The way it should be is "now hold on a moment...do we really want to waste our precious resources nursing this dude back to health?"  Or at best "here's some first aid so you don't die right now...we'll come back for you if the rest of us survive this fight."

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Chaingunfighter 917]

The medical system is constantly growing more complex as we speak.

 

While I don't necessarily want to nurse a broken leg for days just to be able to run again, making injuries less inconsequential and more important to take care of would be great. I'd say to fully heal a broken leg should probably take around 6-12 real life hours in-game (meaning you can't just log off and come back in healed) after it has been properly bandaged and given a splint. That way it'd be reasonably important to take care of but it wouldn't be so long that you'd be better off just committing suicide.

[Caboose187 (DayZ) 3036]

I have been waiting patiently for them to start doing this.  Hell I don't remember the last time I actually needed any medical attention outside of bandaging.  Unfortunately the KoS crowd has been extremely vocal against any form of anything slowing down their kill streak progress.  Hell, they go as far as complaining that something like this forces them to not play the game how they want......

[Jhunt7507 29]

This will probably be added during the beta version

[MountGreen 20]

The medical system is constantly growing more complex as we speak.

 

While I don't necessarily want to nurse a broken leg for days just to be able to run again, making injuries less inconsequential and more important to take care of would be great. I'd say to fully heal a broken leg should probably take around 6-12 real life hours in-game (meaning you can't just log off and come back in healed) after it has been properly bandaged and given a splint. That way it'd be reasonably important to take care of but it wouldn't be so long that you'd be better off just committing suicide.

 

As much as I like your idea, it seems very punishing to those who don't play the game that often (like me). If that were the case I'd honestly rather kill myself and start again than put up with a broken leg for the next 5 sessions I play. :P

[B4GEL 175]

I can't wait for this sort of thing, it was great to see disease in Q1 on the new road map and hopefully other advanced medical stuff will come along with it.
However its a difficult balance, they said they were working on suicide in a recent devblog and it's going to be hard to stop people from suiciding and running back to their gear if they get a disease or broken limb they can't fix in 30 seconds.