Healing system: are you happy with it?

[AssassinT90]

Hello, fellow survivors.

I’ve been having a lot of trouble with the healing system. Not because it’s glitchy, not because it’s too complicated. I’ve been having problems with the difficulty factor.

As you are probably aware, healing wounded limbs is an instant action. That basically means you can endure melee fighting anything, given you have enough first aid kits/bandages and you manage to retreat to use them.
The obvious consequences of this system are: a) getting hurt doesn’t scare you at all, b) Cataclysm becomes much, much easier, c) meleeing hundreds of zombies is possible.

What really bugs me is:
I’m not afraid of facing hundreds of zombies/triffids/fungaloids. Mostly because I can outrun them, but also because when I outrun them, the danger is over. I don’t have to pay any special attention to the wounds, if I don’t want to. I can just go to sleep and I’ll be fully recovered in a day or two. Or I can use a few first-aid kits and go right back into slaying hordes.

Considering Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is a survival game and that in a survival game you are supposed to avoid being violently beaten up every morning, I’m afraid damage just isn’t dangerous enough.

“Why don’t I just kill that hulk? I can just FAK out any damage I receive, and it might even drop some good stuff.”
“Oh, so there’s a pool of acid ahead? No problem, I’ll walk through it and heal all the damage with a couple of bandages and some codeine.”

So… Do you like the currrent system? Do you hate it? Do you want a donut? Feel free to write a reply about it!

[Infotater]

I have to say I’m okay with the healing as it is. Not having a run/sprint feature, the fact that there’s no way to peek or quickly scout out what’s ahead of you without being seen, the way the sound system currently works… it all adds up to the player being in situations where damage being taken is just going to happen. That annoyance is mitigated by the fact that damage is fairly easy and non-complex to heal.

[SweeperM]

If you take a few beatings, don’t forget that your pain will go up, and your speed WAY down, and dealing with pain is not an instant action. If you get slow, you basically become zombie bait, and game over.
Although, I do agree that first aid shouldn’t be instantaneous, it should take time to bandage and treat wounds.

[system]

I want a doughnut.

Also it’s fine for now, I want other features first.

[x2yzh9]

[quote=“Infotater, post:2, topic:52”]I have to say I’m okay with the healing as it is. Not having a run/sprint feature, the fact that there’s no way to peek or quickly scout out what’s ahead of you without being seen, the way the sound system currently works… it all adds up to the player being in situations where damage being taken is just going to happen. That annoyance is mitigated by the fact that damage is fairly easy and non-complex to heal.[/quote]Then why don’t we just implement this solution? It’s simple:

1. Add a locational sound and stealth system, so you can see enemies and sneak by them without being seen. NPCs too.
2. Add a run/sprint feature, and, if possible, a stamina system or some sort of counter balance for run/sprinting.
3. Add the above suggested complex healing system. Ie. broken bones, bleeding, hemmoraghing and much more.
   Keep in my mind this is ALL a LOT of work. But that’s really the only way I see to have a balance to the fact that you’ll have to avoid the hordes a lot more. Probably worthy of it’s own update, or even multiple updates working on it.

[kevin.granade]

Good points, here’s my take on them:

1. sprinting/endurance is a big YES, it’s on my list, and I think it’ll be relatively simple (but a pain in the ass)* to add.
2. stealth is also a big yes, though it might take more thought and planning to make it happen. The first cut of just making monster spotting fallible should be pretty easy though. There’s already an extensive noise/sight/smell system, it’s just currently configured to be infallible.
3. Expanding healing is probably something to stagger, the easy thing to do is just make healing take time, this would also not over-complicate things. Actually it’d be really simple, we can just establish some healing “diseases” that heal over time and then go away, and assign various healing diseases to the various healing items. Sleep-based healing is already gradual enough. A more extensive wound system could be implemented piecemeal with the existing disease system. It’d take a while just because you’d be enumerating every possible wound type and assigning them to either the attack code or to individual monsters.

Overall I’m interested in implementing all of these ideas, but they’re not at the top of my list at the moment.

FYI there is a peek command, I implemented it about a month ago It lets you shift your view by one tile and then drops you into “look around” mode.

*An endurance system would require annotating EVERY action with calls to adjust and/or check endurance.

[daftf4d]

I vote no on the endurance system idea. That would add way too much tedium. The game is tedious enough as it is. Healing via bandages/first aid should take more time.

[system]

I don’t see why we can’t have a basic running system in place, press a button and it starts counting upwards for every tile ran. Then after you come out of running you lose a certain amount of turns to collect your breath.

[Rozy]

I like healing as is currently. Since right now the big killer to taking damage is pain, which does make sense in a way. Though at times players feel a bit tanky with even just decent STR, but given the hordes that can show up it works if you’ve made a mistake and need to leave.

[kevin.granade]

I don’t see why we can’t have a basic running system in place, press a button and it starts counting upwards for every tile ran. Then after you come out of running you lose a certain amount of turns to collect your breath.

Yea you could hack something in just for a run mode and add other actions later, I’ll keep that in mind.

[system]

Now, the only problem with that is what to do if the player is interupted? I’d say go back into run mode, the counter still ticking from the breath you didn’t collect. But then you would need to be able to attack during sprinting, at a str negation.

[kevin.granade]

Nah, run mode would be freely toggleable, and endurance would tick down when you move while in run mode, and tick back up again as time progresses when you’re not in run mode. The only drawback to becoming winded would be that you can’t run anymore.

[AssassinT90]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:12, topic:52”]Nah, run mode would be freely toggleable, and endurance would tick down when you move while in run mode, and tick back up again as time progresses when you’re not in run mode. The only drawback to becoming winded would be that you can’t run anymore.[/quote]So meleeing a dozen of zeds won’t use your endurance? It’s better than what we currently have, anyways.

[kevin.granade]

Yea, that’s exactly why I was thinking I wanted to do a big conversion all at once, but like you say, it’s at least an improvement, and I’ll probably get around to doing a run mode endurance-y thing sooner than I would do a “everything has an endurance cost” change. Then I (or someone else) could go back and add endurance costs to various things piecemeal.

[The_Darkling_Wolf]

I’m all for making healing a little bit more involved. Nothing too realistic, but something along the lines of MGS 3’s sort of system, where you can have lasting wounds which lower the overall max health of a limb until they heal, and obviously lower speed or accuracy or w/e as appropriate.

As for endurance, we’d want to make it affect a few more things as we go in, like a lot of heavy exertion resulting in you getting hungry and thirsty quicker, and sprinting around making a little more noise than walking. If we wanted to go further than that we could have a short term boost to the amount of scent you create after endurance drops a bit, because a sweaty mess is gonna stand out a little more than a freshly washed dude.

[Benedict]

RE: Healing

Couldn’t we just make it so that a certain level of wounding = certain minimum level of pain.

So for example a limb at 50% health automatically implies heavy pain, unless you’re currently on painkillers. The pain wouldn’t just die over time.

It’d be enough of an incentive not to just ignore wounds, but it wouldn’t make acquiring wounds any more or less problematic than they currently are.

There might still need to be some change to FAKs and bandages, but the overall system wouldn’t need such a big overhaul.

[Sharp]

Could do increased pain the more wounded a limb is if you get attacked (break points at maybe 75% and 50% to indicate severely bruised and broken), of course that doesn’t solve the issue with healing quickly, in fact it would make a change so healing takes longer even more dangerous…

[AssassinT90]

[quote=“Sharp, post:17, topic:52”]Could do increased pain the more wounded a limb is if you get attacked (break points at maybe 75% and 50% to indicate severely bruised and broken), of course that doesn’t solve the issue with healing quickly, in fact it would make a change so healing takes longer even more dangerous…[/quote]But… But… Trying to melee a zombie hulk is dangerous!

[Sharp]

Not if you follow the basic principles of krav maga and attack when it doesn’t see you and kick it in the balls!