natural feeling "stress" system

[antiskub2.0 17]

I'm thinking you have a gauge, not a visible one, just one that runs in the background of the game. You spawn at about 75% (I'll explain that in a sec). It regenerates up to 100% or so.

Time spent out of combat regenerates you back up untill you hit 100% at which point additional time spent out of battle will increase the percentage at a significantly slower rate to about 125% or so.

This is you're stress/morality/karma/(whatever) level. For the sake of this post we will just call it your "stress level" but it's a lil different than what that name implies. Everytime you kill someone your stress level takes a hit, decreasing in percentage. The percentage it drops is based on a plethora of different factors possibly including the following:

What stance the person you shot was in (were they "combat ready" or "at ease") (would also add a use for the "at ease" stance)

The stress level of the person you killed.

whether or not they were armed and what they were armed with.

what you killed them with.

(these are just some of examples that I can think of at the top of my head)

So if you kill a bandit, you're battle fatigue takes less of a hit than if you kill a freshly spawned noob. If you're more of a pacifist, the 125% extra allows you a little more leeway when it comes to killing, but requires long periods outside of combat. The reason I say start fresh players at 75% (or lower) is because if you started them at 100% than there would be too high of an incentive not to kill them, so what you would probably get is people who understand that, and run their hatchets at people with guns knowing that the hit that person will take for killing them may make them hesitate in shooting them.

I'm thinking you end up in the 35-45% range and the effects of battle fatigue kick in. ( I don't know exactly what this would cause, nothing major, mostly as a warning.)

**dropped the idea for a bloodlust" effect**

I'm honestly not sure how well I explained this, but I tried..

Edited July 22, 2012 by antiskub2.0

[DestinyAscension 4]

Well. I'm actually not sure about this idea. It would increase the difficulty of banditry a lot and i think people should not be punished for their gameplay by autopiloting them to death. And it would not reduce the amount of griefers, that grab the next best gun and kill everything. If you wanted to adress the banditry with this system, i guess you hit the wrong ones. I can just repeat myself. Bandits are not the problem. Griefers are the ones that are needed get rid off.

[antiskub2.0 17]

I agree that bandits are not the problem, and that the problem is griefers.

I think if you started out with the system on low and almost unnoticeable, you could ratchet it up slowly and tweak the levels at which your "stress level" returns to normal, and how much of a hit it takes when you kill someone. So I think general banditry (especially when killing other bandits) wouldn't be terriblly invaded upon, but just straight grief killing is more likely to have an effect.

I like the sound of a system like this because it largely works passively in influencing peoples behavior towards killing.

The thing about the griefer who grabs the next best gun and kills everything is that a lot of those top tier guns take some time to acquire. I think this is important to factor in.

Also, I was thinking that perhaps with the on set of battle fatigue, your body is stressed out more, and uses food and water faster.

[prometheus111 1]

Decent idea up until:

"Time spent below 15-20% puts you at risk of developing "bloodlust" at which point the adrenaline you get from killing people has become normal to you, and in order to continue to feel normal, you must continue to kill. As you kill more and more, the bar set for how many people you need to kill to achieve the same high increases. If you don't kill, you start going through withdrawl. Cold sweats, vomiting, small visual hallucinations, etc."

Really? How is this realistic? In real life if I were to kill 5 people in a situation that required it out of defense or what not...I would not then go around killing to make sure I keep myself from vomiting. lol We're not vampires.

[Zeromentor 169]

Decent idea up until:

"Time spent below 15-20% puts you at risk of developing "bloodlust" at which point the adrenaline you get from killing people has become normal to you, and in order to continue to feel normal, you must continue to kill. As you kill more and more, the bar set for how many people you need to kill to achieve the same high increases. If you don't kill, you start going through withdrawl. Cold sweats, vomiting, small visual hallucinations, etc."

Really? How is this realistic? In real life if I were to kill 5 people in a situation that required it out of defense or what not...I would not then go around killing to make sure I keep myself from vomiting. lol We're not vampires.

Just like this guy, I could have been onboard with this idea (with tweaking) until this point.

No, I don't support this suggestion. But atleast someone is thinking outside the box when they try to ask for a system to punish banditry, the OP is even asking for something that makes some sense (you get stressed out from firefights, so I think stress from firing higher caliber weapons as well as taking return fire would be cool. Think a suppression system, but where your aim is affected by not only incoming rounds, but constant firing from your part).

But this sounds a lot like a sanity meter with a different name.

[antiskub2.0 17]

k, well we can ditch the "bloodlust" part then.

perhaps just incrementally increase the rate at which you consume food and water under stress?

Also, still important to note, that if you are firing in self defense, this is calculated into the equation as to how much stress you build up. So you would theoretically build up a lot less stress by defending your self from 5 bandits as opposed to say, killing two noobs.