It would be interesting having “realistic” needs for food, drink and sleep as well. Too less food, dring or lack of sleep would probably not be good for your Health… This would also create a better market for food, drink and lodgings as well.
True, I broke my left arm a month ago, cracked upper arm bone clean across and ends were mis-aligned. They put in steel plates to hold together. I have nearly full range of movement now, although it still hurts in some positions. I still lack strength in the arm, have problems opening jam jar or cutting bread. No way I could use a shield. Physio says I can start strength training after six weeks.
For the game to remain fun I think they would have to shorten recovery times considerably to several days. I realise hardcore roleplayers would be disappointed in this so maybe some sort of healing slider could be in the options, to adjust the time this takes?
As already said, realistic is not possible due to many limitations, first being the time frame this is playing in. The only things I don’t want to see are the “get into cover, wait 10sec and be at full/more health” and “just eat 100 cheese wheels and continue fighting” everything other than that will be good =).
They could have it where you go get bandaged up to a certain point, you wont be at max heath. And over the next day or so your health will be back to max.
Yes, I fell of a bike and broke both of my elbows 3 days before Christmas. Now, I can move pretty much without problems, but the right arm, which was a bit dislocated does not have full strenght yet and the doctors told me not to do any sports before half of March or so. And then I will have to do some physiotherapy since I cannot stretch the arms entirely yet.
In other words, if you wanted to make it realistic, you’d have to spend weeks or months of game time recovering from almost any injury you can suffer in a fight. And that would be rather boring and also all of the story would simply happen without you in the meantime.
This is another great example of where taking realism too far could really hurt the game. @MeevarTheMighty is on the right track here. There needs to be some sort of punishment for getting seriously injured, but no one wants to lay in bed for months in-game.
Agree about taking realism too far. Maybe i should have titled this thread differently, but I was hoping to start a discussion about what people don’t like about unrealistic health regen common in a lot of games and how far Warhorse should go towards making their system MORE realistic, not completely realistic.
If I am in a serious battle and get seriously injured maybe my health max is lowered and will recover slowly, and it might take a few in-game days to get back to normal with good amounts of food, medicine, and sleep. During this time period I could do non-combat-centric quests or exploration, but there would be a real downside to getting seriously injured.
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It seems quite a few people like the lowered “max” health as a punishment for having a substantial injury happen to them. If you have played Dark Souls before then maybe a system that is similar to being cursed? The overall health is permanently hampered until you are de-cursed. With KC you could do something similar to that system where your health gets progressively lower until death unless you are bandaged/healed.
Getting a large cut across an arm would hurt sure, but you could continue on with a simple wrap. Now, a week or something from the injury and that simple cut is now infected and you are rotting. That’s something not as easy to continue on with.
This has to go hand in hand with the saving system though. If the punishment is too severe, players will load up a save before the fight, unless they can’t. Either that, or there should be an incentive to go on with an injury. Like a nice scar earning you respect with other fighters or something. But that just opens up a way to abuse the system.
The penalty of death is usually “Go back to your last save, and try again”. If getting injured meant a long-term debuff, I would probably just wait until my enemy killed me entirely.
I would personally be fine with a system like this:
- You get injured (serious penalty, danger of bleeding out)
- You stabilize (penalty reduction)
- After a meal and a good nights sleep you’re as good as new (penalty removal)
Of course a wound would have to be serious for an injury to happen.
This is still a bit drastic though. I understand that the game is also meant for fun, and this system limits the player a lot. Warhorse is probably going with a much more standardized model, and I think I would like to be able to turn the system off as well, so I think this is more suited for modding.
EDIT -
I have some modding experience, and the basic mechanic should be fairly quick to implement over a basic health system. It becomes a lot harder when we’re talking custom models and animations.
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I’m also thinking something similar. Like you can heal yourself to a point but unless you have studied the medical arts your first aid skills should only go so far. So the player would have to seek out a professional.
But as to the rate of regeneration, I’m thinking that health should cap during regeneration and force you to play more cautiously until enough time passes and the cap progresses in level. So say you take a lot of damage (<25% health) but manage to escape battle or defeat your opponents. You do first aid, that heals you to 25%…but then it caps. You have to play at 25% and lowered stamina until a bit of time passes, then the cap increases to 50%. Things get a little easier, mobility and stamina increase. In the next day or so it increases again to 75%, and then eventually back to 100%. I’d agree with a system like this to promote “realism” without being to limiting. It’ll just force you to play smarter and more cautious while recovering. Unless of course crippling a persons limbs is a thing… in which case that should be fixable by a medical professional. Because nothing will bug me more than limping around the wilderness until that heals.
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This is why most games have magic healers, healing potions, etc…
Lets face it, you could be left with a permanent injury like loosing a hand, you could end up with a limp, you could get gangrene… too much reality can suck.
Agreed…but too little reality is also silly.
Just some suggestions.
There needs to be some normal level of regeneration or deterioration depending on a wound.
Some wounds will make you sicker and eventually die without treatment.
Some wounds will gradually heal but need treatment to increase how fast you heal.
Some wounds you can treat yourself but others would need a physician.
Disease was common, doctors were sometimes as bad as the disease…
I’m not sure I’d want to decide how to handle this.
Maybe actually fast forwarding a week or more while you are laid up. This causes you to miss events.
It’s a tough call.
I got the impression that this was not a Hack n’ slash game. I hope that to enter combat is something carefully thought out. And you weigh the cons and the pros of doing so. And if you get injured you will have to spend some time to get well.
I hope people are afraid of dying and getting hurt in this game.
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Me too. in a game reaching for realism like this I hope getting hurt is something people are averse to.
I was thinking maybe something like the Witcher 2 with Alchemy
Yes… too often I find my self going for the biggest baddest glass-cannon in games. Typically all you need to do is hit the other guy as hard as you can, because chances are he doesn’t hit nearly as hard.
From what little research I’ve done, I have found that fencing is more about constant defense, than attack. Even attacks usually have a built-in defense. Of course that would make sense in a realistic world, where death was final. To reach the same effect in a game, would mean making death a very scary concept, and not just a minor setback. A way to do that would be to remove saving (rogue-like), or to make the penalty of death independent of saving.
I think very few players would be able to complete a 30 hr long rogue-like though.
You could remove manual saves, and make the autosaves very scarce, to make death more impactful. There’s nothing worse than going through the same 5-min cutscene 10 times in a row.
This is very similar to what I had envisioned. Clearly it is not true realism, but is a step closer to it than most games and adds a real weight to entering into combat and risking potential injury. I feel like this type of system will add to the tactical strategy of the game significantly.
I should also note that this might not appeal to more casual gamers, so some sort of difficulty setting would help to augment the added difficulty created by this system (there are several other threads that go into this in detail)
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I don’t think we can go for realism - no antibiotics - and abdominal wound will likely mean a slow, painful and unavoidable death in a few days. Serious injury to a limb - chop it off before infection sets in because when it does you die.
Recovery times from injuries measured in weeks/months.
Not going to be realistic or not going to be fun. A graded recovery rate as suggested above is probably the only way of giving things a flavour of reality.
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A little realism doesn’t hurt, but the developers obviously need to keep in mind the ‘fun aspect’ of the game. Injuries to prevent me from properly playing my character for an entire month is not fun. I trust Warhorse will do this properly.