suggestion Pain Rework Idea

[ShadowStar]

Yesterday I posted my idea on how to rework pain on the TheLongDark subreddit . People seem to mostly like the idea and someone suggested I should also post it on here. I really feel pain needs some reworking so here is the post bellow:

I feel like in it's current implementation, pain is just a small annoyance rather than something you should treat. For those unaware, pain can be healed by either using Painkillers or Rose Hip Tea or by waiting 4 hours.

I personally end up just waiting out the 4 hours and hoarding painkillers. This makes me feel like that painkillers are not as important anymore. A couple updates ago, before sprains were reworked, you had to use Painkillers/Rose Hip Tea to heal sprains. This however is no longer the case and all you need is a bandage.

Now, I am not saying to add the use of painkillers for the treatment of sprains again, but I have a different idea.

How about reworking pain and adding levels of pain (Maybe about 5 levels)? Smaller injuries don't hurt much (level 1) while severe injuries hurt a lot (Example: Burns or Mauled by a Bear = Level 5). The level should affect some interactions, crafting, harvesting and so on taking longer for example. Make sleep recover less fatigue since you are basically trying to rest with pain, which is hard to do irl. But to balance this out you can decrease the time it takes for the pain to heal while resting. Also should add a new red gradient border for the edge of the screen that gets more intense the higher the pain level (remove blur for it).

You could either have one very painful injury on one body part, or smaller less painful injuries that would stack the overall pain level. Pain however should not exceed Level 5.

Levels of Pain:

1: Barely hurts (Example: Smaller fall damage without sprains. Short duration: 30 min. Interaction time increase: 5%. Slight red border.)

2: Hurting (Example: Headache from Energy Drinks. Modest duration: 1 hour. Interaction time increase: 10%. A bit more noticeable red border)

3: Hurts quite a lot (Example: Sprains. Medium Duration: 4 hours. Interaction time increase: 20%. Very noticeable red border.)

4: Painful (Example: Wolf Bite. Longer Duration: 12 hours. Interaction time increase: 40%. Strong red border.)

5. Extreme Pain (Example: Mauled by Bear, Burns, Broken Ribs. Longest Duration: 24 - 48 hours. Interaction time increase: 50%. Very strong red border.)

(All these are just examples, it of course would not be up to me to decide the values)

Now when it comes to healing these with painkillers, being mauled and such would require Morphine possibly to instantly heal that pain (new rare item maybe?), so to heal a Level 5 Pain level you'd need at least 2 pills to drop down to Level 4 and another 2 after some time passed to drop to Level 3. From Level 3 you can immediately cure it after some more time passed.

Example:

Level 5 Pain = 2 Painkillers or 1 Rose Hip Tea -> Level 4 Pain -> Wait 1 hour -> Take 2 more pills or 1 Rose Hip Tea -> Level 3 Pain -> Wait 1 hour -> Take 2 more pills or 1 Rose Hip Tea -> Pain healed or at least Pain Level 1 (can be 50:50 chance).

If Morphine would become a thing (Possible spawns would be high chance in medical lockers and very small chance in first aid cabinets) then the pain should instantly drop down to Pain Level 1 or completely heals it, however with the side effect of blurred vision and impact on your aim (note that blur would be exclusive to the morphine effect then and overrides the slight red border of Level 1 pain).

So I wanna know what everyone else thinks. I personally really like my idea, but it's ultimately Hinterland's choice.

Edited March 7, 2020 by ShadowStar
Fixed odd black background behind the text, probably from copying it from the Reddit post.

[odium]

i agree that painkillers have become largely useless, i carry a few and use them rarely when the pain blur is annoying me but i could certainly complete a whole run without 'needing' them, which imo means the system could use a tweak. i do believe pain should be more debilitating so painkillers and rosehips have more value (right now i view rosehips as more of a food item in teas).  whether they implement a tiered system as you suggested or something else i dont care really but i would like to see a bit of overhaul to pain system

[ManicManiac]

@ShadowStar

I see what you are getting at... but frankly, the way this reads seems really contrived and convoluted.
Personally, I'm fine with the system as it is.  I could agree that perhaps it could maybe use some re-tooling, but the method you propose... I just don't think I would enjoy that at all.

[ShadowStar]

Well of course the devs could make changes, balance it to the way they think it would be better. A common suggestion on the reddit post was to limit it to 3 levels. Simplifying this idea. I don't think it's too harsh personally, just that it's something that would make painkillers more important again without making pain a thing that could kill you if you are in safety, but should still be treated if you don't wanna spend a long time recovering from the pain.

So yeah I would be fine with just 3 levels, don't add too many other changes other than make actions take longer, affect aim and such and use painkillers to reduce or fully cure the pain.

[Admin]

Moved to the Wish List forum.

[Guest jeffpeng]

I think if anything painkillers should be reintroduced as a method to cure sprains - in conjunction with a bandage. I kinda like the concept you are proposing @ShadowStar, but as @ManicManiacI feel like it would appear rather contrived to most players, and hard to communicate what it does and why.

Another angle to further the need to actually treat pain would to apply a movement speed penalty for each instance, basically reducing your carry capacity by 5kg.

I really wouldn't want the game to introduce mechanics too complex to grasp at a glace. A strongpoint of TLD is that most things are rather selfexplanatory. On the other hand I agree that pain killers as of now have one use and one use only: to read a book - and that that's probably not the correct way to handle it.