Injury systems, a.k.a. "hitpoints"

[Mr Happy]

Could you consider a measure like HP more of an abstraction though? Not of how much "health" you have, more of your ability to defend against a well placed blow (as, of course, the more solid strikes are made against you, the less your ability to defend against others. A stamina sort of thing.) I realize that in most games, this is not what is intended : "you are stabbed in the head. -16 hP pwned. but you are still alive". Plus, with guns, it doesnt make a whole lotta sense. But still, it could be something to take the place of getted stabbed in the face and living, but still allow for measured stat defining how much longer you can last.

Does a measured stat for this always make sense? Not always. In a gun fight, you are (usually) either alive, dead, or out of the fight (wounded). The problem with this is that it might make applying skills harder. My opinion is, though, that in an RPG, most characters would want to avoid combat as much as possible, as it usually would mean a quick death.

An advantage of a multi person battle (more than one guy on each side) is that it isnt just win or lose. You can win badly, taking heavy casualties, lose well (escape with most of your pals. Cowardly, so minus reputation for that, but you are still alive, so huzzah.) I guess this might be moe in the realm of stategy gaming, but I do like the idea of losing reputation for running away from a fight. Of course, there is nothing stopping you from reloading, but it would be nice if there was some sort of incentive to play through mistakes, just to see what happens.

 

[damaged_drone]

save game needs to be done with already. its a crutch used in place of things that can be handled by gameplay, which considering how shallow and empty many modern games are is fucking stupid.

an idea i had to deal with the issue of realistic injury and death would be to simply have the player be born into a new character, with the gameworld where it was, the former characters fame, influence and deeds a part of the expanding lore. if your character has had children you could then become them and inherit your previous lands and wealth, but back at a childs beginner skill level.

combat should be, yo'know, dangerous.

 

[Globbi]

Fights should be dangerous, but if you may die easily then so may everyone else. You can stabb people when they're sleeping, shot them in their back or snipe. As they die at once there won't be a problem. It's just that you can't kill a gang yourself if they all have guns.
Removing save games may be a bit too far move because it often helps having fun in games. I think most players sometimes save game and check 'what if...'. Still, i think i have a better idea. Do not die You can pay some idiot to check for traps, you can command some people and barely fight.

 

[Grandpa Gamer]

Fact: You simply don't die in a computer game. Ever.
If your main character dies, you reload a saved game and play that part over again, until your character actually didn't die.

Talk of games being "too easy" or "too hard" usually boils down to how often your character dies. If you don't die often enough, the game is "too easy". If you die all the time, the game is "too hard".

Most games are designed around this. First person shooters in partcular.
Ridiculous as it is.

Why not just do away with the dying?
Eh... Because that would make the game an adventure game?

Some games - Planescape Torment springs to mind - try to handle the dying and respawning within the fiction, but that's not always a viable option. I'd say let's make the player character invulnerable, since that's the effect of saving and reloading anyway. If the player won't stay dead, why bother?

Injury systems? For enemies only. (Like the Irak war - the way Bush imagined it.) :shock:

 

[Claw]

The first two Gothic were really good in this regard, especially at the early levels. If you really paid attention, you could kill dozens of wolves and goblins in a row at level one without dying, but the risk of death was always real. Any mistake could cost your life.

That was death done well, imo. Gothic 3 - not so much.

 

[Mayday]

I dunno. I'm having problems in this matter mostly due to low framerate, but thanks to careful moves I was able to challenge an Orc commander and actually win at the very beginning of the game. Another good feature of the G series (well, haven't seen it in many games) was that most people don't kill you if they win a duel. That's why many combats don't end in your death- the tension is there, as you fear for your equipment, gold and reputation, but you're not forced to reload in case of a failure.

As for fighting monsters and traps: my opinion is that few traps should be 100% deadly. Most of them should cause a serious injury (like maybe a broken limb or what?) and should be avoidable with carefulness- forcing the player to observe his surroundings. However, if he fails, he is forced to retreat (imagine fallout-like injury system, where stimpacks weren't enough to heal a broken leg). Same goes for critical hits by monsters- if your arm is broken you drop your stuff and return later with friends. If your leg is broken you take out that wand of one-shot instakill you've been keeping for a rainy day. Failures should force the player to retreat/reconsider, not reload (of course if he's stupid enough to fight with a broken arm, he'll take napdirts... uh, dirtnaps).

 

[neuromantik]

JarlFrank, I love the idea. Variations of damage based upon type of attack and location of injury... it actually opens up a lot more possibilities for the healing aspect of the game.

Combat would be more involved, realism stepped up a bit, and RPG healing would get a major upgrade... uses for witches, shamans, etc.

If this were a vote, my vote would be yes.

 

[jiujitsu]

I liked the Deus Ex system. It still used hitpoints, but every part of the body had it's own.

You could get your arms and legs blown off and still be alive!

 

[TheGreatGodPan]

Why not just do away with the dying?
Eh... Because that would make the game an adventure game?

One of my favorite aspects of adventure games was trying to find all the ways you could die. I think it is a major blemish on LucasArts that they did not include deaths in their adventure games.

The Deus Ex injury system was cool. More games should have used it.

 

[SkeleTony]

Could you consider a measure like HP more of an abstraction though? Not of how much "health" you have, more of your ability to defend against a well placed blow (as, of course, the more solid strikes are made against you, the less your ability to defend against others. A stamina sort of thing.) I realize that in most games, this is not what is intended : "you are stabbed in the head. -16 hP pwned. but you are still alive". Plus, with guns, it doesnt make a whole lotta sense. But still, it could be something to take the place of getted stabbed in the face and living, but still allow for measured stat defining how much longer you can last.

The problem with this is that Hit Points tend to be primarily influenced by one or two particular stats(typically Endurance/Constitution and or Physique/Strength/Size) and not by such things as Agility/Dexterity and Cunning. The only real exception to this I am aware of was the game Villains & Vigilantes which took into consideration every attribute from Strength and bodily weight, to Intelligence and experience/level.

This sort of abstraction also begs a whole slew of problematic questions about what HP represent and what it means to lose them. In a 'realistic' game where the more injured you are, the more your skills suffer this gets very problematic. If one guy got hit with a "Karma beam" that drained him of 50% of his HP by erasing his good fortune and another guy got impaled by a bayonet they both suffer equal losses of HP but now the GM(who is not present in a CRPG for the most part) has to sort out who is affected by how much to which skills.

Does a measured stat for this always make sense? Not always. In a gun fight, you are (usually) either alive, dead, or out of the fight (wounded).

Correct which is precisely why most of us do not want RPGs to become so infused with realism that we go from "Tunnels and Trolls" to "Infections and Insurance Payments". No one wants to role play 4 months of being bed-ridden in a hospital recovering from a gunshot wound. We would rather put up with "stay the night at an Inn and get fully healed!" than that. People need to remember these are role playing GAMES and as such are completely different than simple 'role playing'(in the sense of improvisational acting)

The problem with this is that it might make applying skills harder. My opinion is, though, that in an RPG, most characters would want to avoid combat as much as possible, as it usually would mean a quick death.

Agreed. I have often said that I would love to see developers go away from the respawning random monster hordes and such and instead make combat something easily avoidable 95% of the time and make the risk/reward factor appropriate to the deadliness of combat. I know that in real life engaging in a knife fight to settle a dispute would be near the bottom of my list of options, right after "Sleep with his ugly sister" and "Help him move to a new apartment".

I played EverQuest for a number of years and, of the many things to complain about the one thing that caused loss of sleep was them irrelevance of combat with monsters/npcs. This got worse and worse as the developers gave in to whiny complaints from people who argued that they should not be paying money to watch their characters have to ride a boat to get some where or sit through mana recovery. Now the game is so pathetic that you don't have to walk or ride anywhere(just teleport to any spot you want to be) and mana/HP are pretty much instantaneously recovered. If you die you are not only re-spawned(something that always bugged me) but you can simply mouse-click to have your corpse and items teleported back to your respawn point.

'Pathetic and lame' do not begin to cover it.

 

[SkeleTony]

Fact: You simply don't die in a computer game. Ever.
If your main character dies, you reload a saved game and play that part over again, until your character actually didn't die.

Talk of games being "too easy" or "too hard" usually boils down to how often your character dies. If you don't die often enough, the game is "too easy". If you die all the time, the game is "too hard".

Most games are designed around this. First person shooters in partcular.
Ridiculous as it is.

Why not just do away with the dying?
Eh... Because that would make the game an adventure game?

Some games - Planescape Torment springs to mind - try to handle the dying and respawning within the fiction, but that's not always a viable option. I'd say let's make the player character invulnerable, since that's the effect of saving and reloading anyway. If the player won't stay dead, why bother?

Injury systems? For enemies only. (Like the Irak war - the way Bush imagined it.) :shock:

I would like to introduce you to 'roguelike' games.

Roguelikes...meet Grandpa Gamer.

 

[Grandpa Gamer]

I would like to introduce you to 'roguelike' games.

Roguelikes...meet Grandpa Gamer.

Hello. Long time no see.
Those were the days. We had a lot of fun. Frustration and fun.
You haven't aged as well as I, unfortunately.

Actually, some gameplay ideas in Rogue could be used to good advantage in modern games.
Randomly generated content has a lot of untapped potential, I think.