Psychological Stress, Drugs, Alcohol and Addiction

[pogoman979 4]

Ok so i was replying to this thread: http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=9727

but came up with so many ideas i decided to make a new thread, as the OP of that thread was the most bizarrely writen wall of text i've ever seen and thus i feared it would be ignored.

Also please do not reply to this thread unless you read everything, i know what these forums are like and i know people have already formed their opinions upon reading the thread title.

Ok so, the problem with coding in psychological states and meters is that in reality, some people would be able to handle the events of DayZ better than others; based on their life experiences/mentality/genetics/how they were raised etc. So i have seen this idea shot down in the past, but if you think about it in reality our characters ingame all look the same and get hungry/thirsty at the same rate etc, i.e. this is a game, not everything can be as varied as real life.

WHAT I AM SUGGESTING:

What i think would be a good idea is to have a psychological stress meter, but the more horrific acts the player sees/does the less they are affected by them, so you can end up having some really bad ass characters, and some really pussy ones :D.

HOW IT WOULD WORK:

The meter would be represented by a brain on the GUI. Now the more psychologically stressed the player gets, the less accurate the other ingame meters should be. I,e the more deranged someone becomes the less they pay attention to/are aware of their bodily functions and needs. So this means your hunger meter might stay green even when you are starving, as your mind is so messed up it's not interpreting your bodies signals correctly (the extent of this obviously varies on your psychological stress).

Now while your hunger may be green for ages, it will only go red when it becomes critical, in which case you better eat something fast. However i am also suggesting a new feature which means you can't eat anything when you think you are full (as your character doesn't feel hungry), which also prevents the scenario where someone can devour an entire cow, and means players can't just eat when they are psy stressed and know they are really starving even if their meter says they aren't.

How hungry you can get before your body registers it would be based on the psy meter, and at 100% psy stress and over your body would never register the hunger, meaning you could just die from hunger.

This would mean the player would have a much harder time surviving, however as long as the player is surviving their psychological meter is slowly decreasing, so you can get through it and become a tough cunt.

Obviously there could be alternative/other effects, this is just an idea.

ON TO DRUGS AND ALCOHOL:

Now whilst the psy metere is decreasing slowly, it should be slow enough to be quite a pain, which is where drugs and alcohol come in. Drugs and alcohol should immediately reduce psy stress substantially by providing an escape, i.e. a coping mechanism for the brain, however they also obviously come with their own set of problems.

Aside from the immediate effects which would be hilarious and fun to implement, every time you use a substance there is a chance of addiction kicking in, and the more you use it the higher this chance gets.

Once you are addicted you will have to keep taking that substance to avoid withdrawal symptoms, which could include things like the shakes and also an abnormal succeptibility to horrific situations, as the mind believes it can't cope without its drug. So basically if you have withdrawal the best thing to do would be to wait it out, and make sure you don't do anything terrifying until the addiction wears off, but this means you wont be able to venture near zombies, and so near loot, so you better have some supplies!

So given these mechanics doing drugs or whatever are a viable solution to immediately reducing psy stress, but if you dont handle them correctly you can end up even more messed up. Drugs and alco also give players who want to get psy tough fast a route, as you can do heaps of murder and then just take drugs to get over it, however if a player gets addicted and then can't find any more of that substance, their withdrawal means they are extremely succeptable to psy stress again while they get over the drug.

One further note, psy stress would be able to be increased over 100%, so someone who is truly fucked up won't be able to decrease it below 100% to register that they are hungry as the psy stress wont decrease fast enough, unless they find more drugs and alco, which leads to addiction again, etc

Now for the people who say some folks may be able to just kill and see zombies eating things without effects anyway, the point of this system is if you play your character right he will eventually not give a shit about those things, but for fun and gameplay/character development purposes when everyone spawns they should be pussies ^_^

[bddy420 0]

Ok so i was replying to this thread: http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=9727

but came up with so many ideas i decided to make a new thread' date=' as the OP of that thread was the most bizarrely writen wall of text i've ever seen and thus i feared it would be ignored.

Also please do not reply to this thread unless you read everything, i know what these forums are like and i know people have already formed their opinions upon reading the thread title.

Ok so, the problem with coding in psychological states and meters is that in reality, some people would be able to handle the events of DayZ better than others; based on their life experiences/mentality/genetics/how they were raised etc. So i have seen this idea shot down in the past, but if you think about it in reality our characters ingame all look the same and get hungry/thirsty at the same rate etc, i.e. this is a game, not everything can be as varied as real life.

WHAT I AM SUGGESTING:

What i think would be a good idea is to have a psychological stress meter, but the more horrific acts the player sees/does the less they are affected by them, so you can end up having some really bad ass characters, and some really pussy ones :D.

HOW IT WOULD WORK:

The meter would be represented by a brain on the GUI. Now the more psychologically stressed the player gets, the less accurate the other ingame meters should be. I,e the more deranged someone becomes the less they pay attention to/are aware of their bodily functions and needs. So this means your hunger meter might stay green even when you are starving, as your mind is so messed up it's not interpreting your bodies signals correctly (the extent of this obviously varies on your psychological stress).

Now while your hunger may be green for ages, it will only go red when it becomes critical, in which case you better eat something fast. However i am also suggesting a new feature which means you can't eat anything when you think you are full (as your character doesn't feel hungry), which also prevents the scenario where someone can devour an entire cow, and means players can't just eat when they are psy stressed and know they are really starving even if their meter says they aren't.

How hungry you can get before your body registers it would be based on the psy meter, and at 100% psy stress and over your body would never register the hunger, meaning you could just die from hunger.

This would mean the player would have a much harder time surviving, however as long as the player is surviving their psychological meter is slowly decreasing, so you can get through it and become a tough cunt.

Obviously there could be alternative/other effects, this is just an idea.

ON TO DRUGS AND ALCOHOL:

Now whilst the psy metere is decreasing slowly, it should be slow enough to be quite a pain, which is where drugs and alcohol come in. Drugs and alcohol should immediately reduce psy stress substantially by providing an escape, i.e. a coping mechanism for the brain, however they also obviously come with their own set of problems.

Aside from the immediate effects which would be hilarious and fun to implement, every time you use a substance there is a chance of addiction kicking in, and the more you use it the higher this chance gets.

Once you are addicted you will have to keep taking that substance to avoid withdrawal symptoms, which could include things like the shakes and also an abnormal succeptibility to horrific situations, as the mind believes it can't cope without its drug. So basically if you have withdrawal the best thing to do would be to wait it out, and make sure you don't do anything terrifying until the addiction wears off, but this means you wont be able to venture near zombies, and so near loot, so you better have some supplies!

So given these mechanics doing drugs or whatever are a viable solution to immediately reducing psy stress, but if you dont handle them correctly you can end up even more messed up. Drugs and alco also give players who want to get psy tough fast a route, as you can do heaps of murder and then just take drugs to get over it, however if a player gets addicted and then can't find any more of that substance, their withdrawal means they are extremely succeptable to psy stress again while they get over the drug.

One further note, psy stress would be able to be increased over 100%, so someone who is truly fucked up won't be able to decrease it below 100% to register that they are hungry as the psy stress wont decrease fast enough, unless they find more drugs and alco, which leads to addiction again, etc

Now for the people who say some folks may be able to just kill and see zombies eating things without effects anyway, the point of this system is if you play your character right he will eventually not give a shit about those things, but for fun and gameplay/character development purposes when everyone spawns they should be pussies ^_^

[/quote']

Sooooo nice and orderly. I've not the time to make posts all pretty pretty.

I like the food meter Idea a lot..... That's excellent. Also, I fully agree with consumption restrictions. I cannot eat 5 steaks. They are kind of like Wilderness blood bags at the moment.

As far as eventually getting over the stress.... I don't know. As the game stands it has No mechanics (Other than finding guns) that make an older character better than a new character. A 'levelable' psych isn't something I would like to see. Psych and better food meter's are. A Red psych Bar could mean you don't keep food down. Nauseousness.

I would def like psych to slowly normalize when you are with friends. The more friends the lower it changes with a cap of maybe 5 players.

Addiction is a fun idea to toy with but alcohol is no where near as addicting as most substances and I drink about 4-5 beer's a day maybe a shot sometimes for 2-3 weeks in a row only to not drink for a month. Bud.... well..... Not addicting no argument, its not. Painkiller's? Idk.... Certain ones yeah. (Sorry im over critical? Over technical?) Morphine would calm you the fuck down. Morphine made me a great writer whilst I pondered weak and weary over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. Nevermore (I Kid).

Honestly I just thought stress and psych would be one quick stupid easy fuckin way to get player A to more or less want a player B and C so that all three can be literally 'happier' in game.

I wanted Drugs and alcohol In game for, like you said, the funny immediate effects (Which could get you into a jam and should last quite a while.... the game is in real time so you should have to manage alcohol consumption) and so that the lone wolves and bandit's still can be out there on their own but would definitely have a harder time like any real scenario lone wolf.... even actual Lone Wolves. Shower. Coffee. Work. Thanks for Doctoring up the post Broski.

[pogoman979 4]

haha well your post is at least more readable than that other one now.

i have a habit of overthinking ideas and writing essays about them, so thank you for taking to the time to read it, didn't think anyone would XD.

i agree with pretty much the entirety of your reply. The only point i'd like to make is the reason i brought addiction into it is because while substances such as alcohol aren't necessarily that addictive, they can be when used as a coping mechanism, which is what i am proposing.

i.e. if you only feel good when you a drunk cause it distracts from the horrors that you have seen, then yes alcohol would become extremely addictive.

[bddy420 0]

haha well your post is at least more readable than that other one now.

i have a habit of overthinking ideas and writing essays about them' date=' so thank you for taking to the time to read it, didn't think anyone would XD.

i agree with pretty much the entirety of your reply. The only point i'd like to make is the reason i brought addiction into it is because while substances such as alcohol aren't necessarily that addictive, they can be when used as a coping mechanism, which is what i am proposing.

i.e. if you only feel good when you a drunk cause it distracts from the horrors that you have seen, then yes alcohol would become extremely addictive.

[/quote']

Awww yes Excellent.... so mental Addiction? I can def see this irl. Deaths in Families, GF's leaving, Dogs dying..... all things I might possibly drink over and I live a perfectly boring/normal 25 year old stoner loser life with no blood guts and gore. I fully agree and in that sense I would say ANYthing that affects the brain would def be addicting (If only mental it would still Suuuck in that situation) And Cigarette's. I like the Idea of a cherry glow, also cigarette addiction sucks, I quit last september. Hard as hell (Bud helped ^.^) but cigarettes would be a small pack you could carry on you. Only 20 per pack. Make em smoke if possible and light up. At night code in a small 'glow' I dont know Im gonna be late for my shitty Job. Your post is excellent Sire, Thoroughly enjoyed it and now that you clarified your addiction idea's (More like now that I realized the mental addiction/physical) Excellent.

[pogoman979 4]

haha cheers bro. Also being a stoner doesn't make you a loser! I'm in my fourth year of software engineering and i light up as much as my workload permits, fucking love it XD

[ludriramit 1]

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Edited May 4, 2016 by ludriramit

[Coleman (DayZ) 14]

Addiction?

I would have an addiction to beans.