suggestions for a mental health system in Dayz

[r3dskull 14]

Ok we all know the Dayz does a pretty good job of simulating of the physical side of the the zombie apocalypse (animations aside, sorry rocket I know your not an animator!) but what about the mental toll on the player?

I came up with this as a game design concept from getting tired of getting whacked by faceless snipers, the Call of Duty types who seem to be slowly destroying the social experiment that Dayz started out as. What would make these guys stop and talk to me, maybe if they did it would make it harder for them to just blow me away when they get to know me as a human being, what could I have that they would need? (coz blood bags just aren't cutting it!) So here it is:

Mental Heath System!

Your mental health takes damage to varying degrees if:

Low

You take pain killers or morphine

You injure yourself.

You are chased by zombies.

Your hungry or thirsty for a prolonged period.

You are harmed by zombies.

You are harmed by other players.

You kill zombies.

Med

You discover a dead player and interact with them (loot, hide etc).

You are seriously injured or break a leg.

You seriously injure another player.

You get cold.

You Kill another player in self defense.

High

You get an infection.

You Kill another player in cold blood.

You eat another player (You should be able to gut, cook and eat other players this would have an impact on both morality and mental Health)

The mental health damage bar (which would of course be invisable to the player) would take a long time to fill up over maybe 12 hours of playing if the player is involved in frequent high damage activities and would have 4 stages, so you would have to fill the bar 4 times to get to the fourth stage. Effects are accumulative so a stage two you would be having occasional visual and Aural hallucinations and at stage 4 you would randomly feel all four effects. Also the fequency of an effect occuring would increase as you progress down the stages

Stage 1

Aural hallucinations : At random times the player would hear gunfire, player movement noises, vehicle noises, zombie noise, animals when there was nothing there.

Stage 2

Visual hallucinations: Zombie, player, animal models would randomly appear and then when the player gets closer disappear. Also models would get confused zombies, could appear as animals, or players and vice a versa.

Stage 3

Freak out. At random time the player freaks out and makes screaming noises that can be herd by other players there is also a low chance that they might automaticly fire of a couple of rounds of the weapon they are holding.

Stage 4

Break down. The player collapses to their knees sobbing and covers their head with their hands for a egg timed period.

Anti-psychotics (medical loot) would remove the effects for a set period but they would not lower the damage on the mental health bar so when they run out you once again being to effect by the effects of the stage you at.

Here's the game design trick the only way to restore mental health is to sit at a fireplace with another player! As you sit you health bar will gradually refill. You could receive bonuses to the restoration for the amount of players you sit with. It would make fireplaces hubs and force players to interact with each other if only of 5 mins or so. I think this would be a great story telling tool and provide a greater survival challenge for more experienced players.

What do you think? A way of getting people togeather without restricting play styles? Would you share stories with a bandit over the campfire? Flame away!

Edited September 16, 2012 by R3DSKULL

[GoverningNick 12]

pretty good idea

[terex 322]

This seems like it would be way too difficult to incorporate..

[r3dskull 14]

Cheers Nick,

Just think we need more things that bring people togeather but are still part of a survival mod. Might encouge players in the early stages to light fires in order to signal to players that they wanted to chat, share some beans and recoup thier mental health.

[r3dskull 14]

Terrex,

I am not saying this should be part of the stand alone at alpha launch but maybe a goal for the developers in the longer term. Any ideas on how to simplify it? I am not a code man :-)

[krihelion 175]

once again punishing people who kill, i am no call of duty fan, but I play this game to have fun, which for me is killing and surviving

[r3dskull 14]

It's not really punishing people who kill just making them think twice about doing so, making them face the consequences of their actions, also if your in a group of killers there would be little punishment at all. Live togeather Die alone. It would make being a lone wolf more skillful more of an elite player. Would also make people try robbing without killing, create more tense situtations.

[Pyro_Marine 147]

This seems like it would be way too difficult to incorporate..

So, because something would be "difficult to incorporate", that means we shouldn't do it? Winning WW2 was difficult but they did it...

I like the idea. *Hands out beans*

Edited September 15, 2012 by Pyro_Marine

[terex 322]

So, because something would be difficult "to incorporate", that means we shouldn't do it? Winning WW2 was difficult but they did it...

I like the idea. *Hands out beans*

No, not at all. But comparing a real life event to however much work this may be for the dev team is logical. If it would even work. People don't just hallucinate because they see a dead body or someone die.. Too many movies.

[aksuduud 64]

Would be annoying as hell.

[Hydra (DayZ) 472]

This is not Amnesia, and anti-biotics are not laudanum.

-edit, misread anti-psychotics as anti-biotics. Idea is still not fair, however. I don't want to be sitting on a hill and sniping people trying to rob my camp and start randomly screaming at the top of my lungs.

Edited September 15, 2012 by Hydra

[Sutinen 635]

I can imagine a gourp of bandits logging in after this update, they all start going insane in their camp :D

[Elektro (DayZ) 7]

No thx, I like sniping you people with my AS50

[cb_the_tr00per 2]

nice thoughts...

But i think that dayz is your story, its in your own mind not in some virtual mind... All your actions should affect you as a real person, not some virtual hallucinations.

You are addressing the KOS Problem, but in my opinion its a wrong approach.

The solution to this "Problem" would be a identification system to identify previously met people... Right now you can just make the difference between survivor/Bandit/Hero but if you could personalize the characters so you can visually identify your opponent your actions would have more consequences.... hard to implement i know.

[PorkNBeans (DayZ) 20]

I like this idea. Stage three could also involve the player randomly talking to themselves as opposed to just screaming. With good voice talent they could say some truly disturbing and/or hilarious things.

However killing other players should not have such a large impact. For some players it's their core playstyle and that would penalize them too much.

Also (cB)the_tr00per has a really good point. I already find my own mental health affected by this game, and that has much more meaning.

[Zeppa 562]

I dont like this, these things should be coming from you... not from your char.

I dont even wanna list things that I see wrong here, lets just say that most of the ppl wont go crazy from stuff that OP has stated... painkillers? looting corpse? getting cold?? really?

[r3dskull 14]

I think people are missing the point slightly, it's an acumaltive effect. Even if you engaged in high level activity you would still take some time to hit stage one.

I am not suggesting that you would start hallucinating if you saw one a dead body or someone die today in your home town or if you fell in some water and got soaked and cold. But If you were alone, with no human contact and hunted by infected zombies, over a period of twelve hours you saw 6 dead bodies and were forced to loot them just to find food and supplys, you saw someone coming out of a shop with some beans murdered with an axe, then you killed two women in cold blood beacuse you were scared and had an itchy tigger finger then you were ripped up by zombies and broke your leg only to be saved by injecting yourself with morphine, then you spent the day wandering the zombie infested streets in the rain and caught an infection... you might hit stage one and start to become a little paranoid.

[r3dskull 14]

(cB)the_tr00per criticisms are perhaps the most valid, but aren't we already having active effects (the shakes, trauma) coming from the avatar not the player? Perhaps the effects could be made more subtle so they influence a players behavior rather than control it.

[cb_the_tr00per 2]

as already said it not that i dont like your idea... but in my opinion a system as you suggested should come with a story game.

i agree, we need something to affect people that shoot others in cold blood. and not just a bandit skin, a identification system, to visually identify a person as someone you know or someone you never met before.

also getting stuff togehter should be more difficult. depending on the way they dies parts of the inventory could be destroyed and shot to pieces during the firefight (so you cant just run back and take everything), less high tier loot, less space in rarer tents.... so you think twice because you could loose your stuff...

for encounters with zeds: they should be more dangerously, you shouldnt be able to loose them in houses that easy (i know engine limitation) so if they detect you need massive firepower to drop all of em or you need to run to the hills... uhm for your lives i mean.

as a addition there could be some being nervous state, your char should breathe hard and the gun could be a bit shaky... triggering the effect by zeds making it worse with the increasing number of zeds and the fact wether they are chasing you or not....

[John Spectre 32]

This would take the game to the next level of the survival horror genre and would indeed cause more people to try to meet one another and talk and help one another. It would also dial down a lot of 'PvP' which really, isn't a bad thing. Just because its 'your playstyle' doesn't automatically make it a necessary part of the game. Of course if you don't like it, your free to not play it.

No thx, I like sniping you people with my AS50

this is completely useless imo. Your not involved in the 'survival' aspect of the game, which is its focus. Just using other players for target practice. Fun though it may be, it is in fact highly unlikely and un-authentic behaviour in this given situation.

[birdman 108]

nice thoughts...

But i think that dayz is your story, its in your own mind not in some virtual mind... All your actions should affect you as a real person, not some virtual hallucinations.

You are addressing the KOS Problem, but in my opinion its a wrong approach.

The solution to this "Problem" would be a identification system to identify previously met people... Right now you can just make the difference between survivor/Bandit/Hero but if you could personalize the characters so you can visually identify your opponent your actions would have more consequences.... hard to implement i know.

Not a fair argument as you have the whole internet way of thinking. Peolple grief, troll, and flame because they know they are immune to repercussion. So I will almost guarantee that 90% of people will end up PK-ing if the game stays as is. There is no perk to being good, no con to being bad. There is no reason to play as a team other than to camp n00bs and post "Let's Play" videos of it.

I am not saying your character should sob if he kills someone, but something should be in effect. Maybe a Red Dead Redemption style wanted meter? Extra loot for killing a notorious bandit? Extra loot for killing high level heros? Otherwise this is a survival PvP game with zombies for background noise (which a survival PvP has it's own merits but Day Z is not meant for that).

[Exenima 45]

I love ths idea. Especially the part about getting over the mental health issue by sitting around a fire with another player, this gives people means and motive to actually make friends with players, rather then just shoot them. It wouldn't be all that hard to script in, i think the dev's could do it quite easily.

Medication should be hard to find, and should only be in certain places, so you have to risk going to get them. But all in all, i think it's a great idea that should be built on.

You have my beans sir.

[BwobBwub 660]

Sir, i would share beans with you over a campfire.

[MasterZ 90]

This is not a bad idea, but it's very much not needed.

Putting everything aside but gameplay, this is simply a way to demolish a certain kind of playstyle.

Sure, it's very annoying when other people shoot you just because they can.

Instead of punishing people that shoot other people, the game should reward people that don't shoot other people or rather, should reward people that work together.

1) Make ammo and high-grade weapons scarce.

2) Increase the total amount of zombies in urban areas, make them non-sprinting but detect you even when you prone. (Smell.)

3) Increase the amount of interactions that players can do, for example:

- Bandaging done by other people is more effective as you can't reach all places yourself properly. (Doing it yourself will make you bleed for 1 minute still, but only at 1/10th speed.

People will shoot other people less because ammo is scarce and might be needed in the cities.

People have higher chances of survival in urban areas when sticking together, here is where they will most likely use their conserved ammo.

People will stick together more because making other people help you will get things done faster and better.

Edited September 16, 2012 by MasterZ

[r3dskull 14]

Thanks for all the Beans folks!

I am a little confused how some people think this system punishes a play style? I like to run most of the time that means I need to consume alot of fluids do I complain about this being a punishment on my playstyle? No it's part of the fun of the game. Frankly if you snipe newbies and the unarmed on the coast with your AS50 then "in game" your a psychopath and at least this system helps you simulate that more effectivley. If you don't have a mechanic like this that forces you on very rare occassions to interact with others then all the lambs will get pissed off and stop playing the game and the wolves will all be camped out with snipers with no one to kill! Imagine you just spawned and some bandit points a gun at you and tells you to turn around, he puts an axe and some matches in your backback and marches you to a wooded area where he tells you to build a fire, do you try and use that axe on him when he gets confortable or try to strike up a conversation? Maybe you come across a group of strangers around a camp fire and the invite you to join them as your having fun a another group attacks, or in a cherno raid one of your group freaks out and starts shoting another member saying he's a zombie, or a bandit gives away his position by his insane ranting, or in a city a group gathers around a burning bin to share story's, trade, eat and ease the burden of their situation all these would be supported and reinforced by an in game mechanic, is that not cool?