Condition, status effects, and condition recovery

[sarudak]

What is condition? As best I can tell it's meant as an abstraction of the player's health and well-being. Your condition only drops from direct damage or when any of your four statuses have drained all the way to the bottom and then you gradually lose condition. In addition to condition we have specific status effects like sprains, hypothermia, bleeding and infection. I like this system, it is a good system that represents how the player is doing without too much complexity. My big issue is that condition and status conditions are resolved too quickly, there's almost nothing in the game that can't be resolved with 24 hours of bed rest. You can be mauled nearly to death by a bear and 16 hours of rest later be in peak physical condition, I feel like this breaks verisimilitude and leads to many balance issues like starving hibernation or players not being to concerned with condition loss while chopping wood/harvesting corpses/fighting wolves etc.

What do I imagine would be better? Condition and status effect recovery should take longer. I would say minimum 3-4 days of mostly resting in a warm location while well supplied to fully recover from something like a bear attack. Recovering should also burn extra calories compared to normal because your body needs the extra energy to heal.

The advantages of this change would be significant. Simple exploits like starving hibernation would be out because allowing yourself to starve would just require more calories later to recover. Condition would be something you always struggle to preserve and keep your character in the best shape possible (like in real life, I think most players tend to do this even though it's not currently optimal play). Further it would help with the feeling of narrative. If no matter what happens to you you can erase all traces of the damage within 24 hours you feel disconnected from your previous experiences, otoh if condition loss is serious and you take several days to recover (occasionally limping out to get wood or food) that creates a powerful narrative for the player.

I know you guys want to create a powerful compelling survival experience. Don't be afraid of some players who will complain when you give them what they bought.

[Xantar]

Ignoring the fact that it's super unrealistic that you can measure your condition in exact percentage, I'm sure everyone agreed with you about being recover in a single day from near death state.

Hinterlands should invert the rate of recovery. Basically, recovering from 10% to 30% will takes you several days to a week, while recovering 80% to 100% takes half a day.

10% is basically near death state. Getting up from 10% to 30% is a challenge by itself. Keeping yourself warm, full, hydrate for the recovery. Would definitely stop people from letting their condition drop that low.

Anything below 50% are serious.

There should also be probabilities for fatal wounds during encounters on Stalkers Mode or higher. Fractured skull. Internal Bleeding. Severed Arteries. Stuff that can't be heal by popping pills. You will die - and very painfully.

[akodo1]

I agree, it seems odd that I can starve to death so quickly (which should take weeks) and heal so quickly from a bear attack (which should also take weeks)

Granted, many weeks of bed-rest after an attack would mean that if an attack didn't kill you it would simply result in a 'restart' of the game. Also 3 weeks before starving makes starvation a non-threat and also ruins the game. Still, should be some better options.

#1 when you get to zero calories the counter goes 3x as slow as the other counters.

#2 have two counters. 1 is 'hunger' which starts when you are at zero calories, runs at the same rate as the other counters. When that counter gets to zero you get the affliction 'starvation' (slows you, makes all tasks slightly more difficult, can't carry as much weight, tasks take 2x as long but use up half the calories). In starvation mode you see a negative calorie count. Each 10 calories is -1% so you can go -1000 calories before death.

(Yes, once you go to zero calories there is a plateau where you are hungry and can operate for a while at 'zero calories' before going negative. Burning calories during this time just speeds the hunger counter on it's way to starvation. Still many savvy survivors may horde food and spend most of their time in condition 'hungry' and that's probably a good thing.)

Wounds and Conditions. A night or two of bedrest should get you back to a reasonable level, so the new player or casual player can continue to have enjoyment with minor hindrances. However they should only be at 75% normal capacity. (go from sprained ankle to sore ankle, go from bleeding wound to healing wound) To fully heal should take a few weeks. This means the guys who are playing the 100 day long games, they are the ones who have the time in to make it worth going through extra trouble to fully rid themselves of the condition. They are also the ones who will be playing long enough so the risk of having multiple 'partially healed' conditions cumulatively rack up.

[Sly]

What is condition? As best I can tell it's meant as an abstraction of the player's health and well-being. Your condition only drops from direct damage or when any of your four statuses have drained all the way to the bottom and then you gradually lose condition. In addition to condition we have specific status effects like sprains, hypothermia, bleeding and infection. I like this system, it is a good system that represents how the player is doing without too much complexity. My big issue is that condition and status conditions are resolved too quickly, there's almost nothing in the game that can't be resolved with 24 hours of bed rest. You can be mauled nearly to death by a bear and 16 hours of rest later be in peak physical condition, I feel like this breaks verisimilitude and leads to many balance issues like starving hibernation or players not being to concerned with condition loss while chopping wood/harvesting corpses/fighting wolves etc.

What do I imagine would be better? Condition and status effect recovery should take longer. I would say minimum 3-4 days of mostly resting in a warm location while well supplied to fully recover from something like a bear attack. Recovering should also burn extra calories compared to normal because your body needs the extra energy to heal.

The advantages of this change would be significant. Simple exploits like starving hibernation would be out because allowing yourself to starve would just require more calories later to recover. Condition would be something you always struggle to preserve and keep your character in the best shape possible (like in real life, I think most players tend to do this even though it's not currently optimal play). Further it would help with the feeling of narrative. If no matter what happens to you you can erase all traces of the damage within 24 hours you feel disconnected from your previous experiences, otoh if condition loss is serious and you take several days to recover (occasionally limping out to get wood or food) that creates a powerful narrative for the player.

I know you guys want to create a powerful compelling survival experience. Don't be afraid of some players who will complain when you give them what they bought.

+1.

Only the hypothermia should resolve completely when the freezing bar is completely refilled or something like that. Another words the bar is depleted - hypothermia affliction is on, the bar is refilled - hypothermia is off.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothermia

[Sly]

On 1/2/2016 at 8:19 AM, Xantar said:

Ignoring the fact that it's super unrealistic that you can measure your condition in exact percentage, I'm sure everyone agreed with you about being recover in a single day from near death state.

Hinterlands should invert the rate of recovery. Basically, recovering from 10% to 30% will takes you several days to a week, while recovering 80% to 100% takes half a day.

10% is basically near death state. Getting up from 10% to 30% is a challenge by itself. Keeping yourself warm, full, hydrate for the recovery. Would definitely stop people from letting their condition drop that low.

Anything below 50% are serious.

There should also be probabilities for fatal wounds during encounters on Stalkers Mode or higher. Fractured skull. Internal Bleeding. Severed Arteries. Stuff that can't be heal by popping pills. You will die - and very painfully.

Interesting.

[AHGoodwin]

I agree and really like all of the suggestions here. I especially dislike the disconnect from past experience. There needs to be more long term consequences to poor decisions and mistakes.