MMO PROJECT PART SIX - Hitpoints and Medicals

[DarkSign]

Id like to get some feedback on making the medical skills really fun and fit into our MMO.

Here's how health and healing is going to work:

When you take damage, your health bar goes down - of course.
At certain levels of health the maximum amount of health you can regen will be lowered. Also the rate at which you regen will lower as well.

Critical hits will be rare wounds that cause lasting (but not permanent) disfunction in a character.

Leg = runspeed + lasting % down in health max (possibly walk shaky)
Arm = - STR, - accuracy
Chest = - CON, - END
Groin = - CHA, -LUCK (possibly walk shaky)
Head = - CHA, - INT (camera shakes or flashes for blindness)

(Im tempted to put in an EXTRA critical type that permanently makes you walk with a limp or lose an arm for roleplaying)

WOUND TYPES: normal, critical, bleeding:

Normal - just a loss of hp plain and simple.

Critical take a skilled surgeon or hospital to heal. Has effects described above.

Bleeding = normal damage + DoT damage until healed or dead.

MEDICAL SKILLS: first aid + surgery

first aid = stop bleeding + regain some hp. Can be performed on yourself. Level of first aid skill = increased amt of restore and faster time

Surgery = treat critical wounds or restore to 100% of hp max.

RACIAL Differences:

Mutants are much quicker to stop bleeding, higher hp, slow to regen
BioBorgs have faster regen rate, lower hp, fast bleed
Humans have best mix of hp, regen and bleeding

MEDICINE:

Much like UO/WoW's alchemy system, there will be mutated plants all over the wasteland and in chemical shops in cities that can be combined to make healing pharms. The rarer, the more it can heal.

EDIT***
VIRUSES and DRUGS:

Players will be able to craft viruses and drugs that have semi-persistent effects.

Viruses would have characteristics like:
latency period - you might not know if you have it until you get back to town or near friends
contageousness - how many people or the AoE range of spreading infection
stat decrease - speaks for itself

Drugs - pretty much the same, but could be crafted to have positives as well as negatives. Addiction rate would become a characteristic. "Chem dependent" anyone?

HOSPITALS:

NPC Outposts and Player-towns will have med units:
The higher rank these are, the faster the heal rate.
The more time you spend in these, the more your max hp level gets restored.
Logging out inside one of these will bring you back to 100%.

CONTROLS:
One of things I havent decided is how to make the actual process of using your medic skill interesting.

Im not sure if the skills should be accquired through use, by paying a trainer, through quests, or a combination of these.

HELP?!

Im also trying to come up with some semi-realistic, but yet still fun gameplay for medics.

There's a game called "Combat Medic Special Ops" here that I havent played.

There's also Theme Hospital

I dont want this to get into feature creep, but as we create a world where we want to make real professions mean something, I can see quests that involve much more than hitting a button.

Creating an interactive interface for medics is just one of the opportunities we have.


If anyone has played a game with interesting controls for a medic...let me know.

 

[Claw]

Diseases. For interesting medicine you should try diseases. I always liked how in Realms of Arkania, it was likely that some characters suffered from fever after being injured in combat.

The symptoms of a disease could be a hint for which hebs might help, but without being entirely clear.
The herbs could have different strenghts against each symptom, and the quack may have to experiemt to get the correct doseage. Negative side-effects would be clues that a dose was too high.
Also, it may be necessary to cancel out some effects of a herb with another herb to avoid side-effects, and some herbs may have genuine negative effects.
Valuable herbs may be pure (less different effects), have generic positive effects that are always good, not cause side effects, etc.

Basically MW's alchemy, just more complex. Or maybe don't make it less complex, just use MW's alchemy system as base.

 

[DarkSign]

Ahh I had forgotten to include writing on that part. Ill edit the above to include my existing ideas viruses and drugs.

Anyone have any ideas on the medical interface? Just hitting a button would be teh suck.

 

[dunduks]

Anyone have any ideas on the medical interface? Just hitting a button would be teh suck.

It could be something like that (this is for treating critical wounds e.g. surgery):
The patient is displayed as "dummy" (skeleton+muscles+blood vessels) with a close up on the damaged parts (head, legs etc), then you could have a connect the correct points to "repair". The higher your medical skill the more hints you could get as to how connect "things" properly, you could also add the choice of proper insturments (like something can be done with just a knife, something need scalpel and so on).

 

[Sovy Kurosei]

Your regeneration scheme makes no sense. Gameplay wise all you are doing is encouraging people to attack lower level mobs and players. It also means more downtime and that isn't fun. Realism wise it doesn't make much sense. Your body heals one laceration just as fast as 10. Your body regenerates more red blood cells the more blood you have lost. If you are going to have some kind of variable HP regeneration scheme then I suggest you have it so that the lower your HP gets the more HP you regenerate per "tick". Otherwise scrap it.

 

[DarkSign]

Hmm. Interesting thoughts here. I was going more for the "if you're wounded, then you're more vulnerable" type of situation with the variable regen rates.

But I suppose if the regen rates were inverted or evened out it would facilitate faster combat.

The quesion becomes..is faster combat a good thing?..or would you rather have more strategic combat?

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Nice ideas. Carry on.

 

[DarkSign]

Our gameplay system is a classless system where skill per use allows you to change your character. Of course we are going to have to hard-code some limits like Ultima Online did (only 700% of skills at any time in UO).

Basically you'd have a bar of buttons all greyed out...and as you use the lower skills the higher skills would open up. At 20%, 35%..of your medical skill, certain feats would open up.

This way people could learn a few medical skills if they wanted to.

So I began thinking of a breakdown like this:

Decyphering the chart above you'll notice a few things:

a) each hit must be checked for 3 types of damage - normal, bleeding, and critical

b) each category will have different levels (bleeding 1,2,3...n) which denote different damage ranges. For example, Bleeding 2 might cause 2d6 points of damage per tick, where at Bleeding 3 might cause 3d6.


I was tempted to separate First Aid and Surgery but realized that this was merely making things too complicated. Yes the healing of critical wounds would be surgery, but is there really a reason to separate the two skills? Merely make the Medical Skill on a percentage% and only allow the "surgical" type skills at higher %s.

One thing that I havent integrated yet is the ability to repair someone's max hitpoints level. Not sure where that should fit in. Perhaps as part of the same system but I havent come up with a name for it.

Keep the ideas rolling guys. I appreciate the brain jog.

 

[DarkSign]

UPDATE:

Ok. I think I have a better handle on this now.

The Medical Skill will have 2 major parts - Trauma & Engineering

> Trauma consists of the ability to treat 3 kinds of wounds: normal, bleeding, and critical. Such treatment will require equipment like bandages, drugs, and tools. The quality, proximity required and speed of treatment will be variable categories.

The 4th type Traumatic healing will be called: Restoral. This will be the skill of bringing another player back to his or her full hp maximum.

>Engineering is the ability to identify, cure, and craft both drugs and viruses.
This too will require equipment. The crafting of drugs and viruses will depend on plants and chemicals scavenged throughout the wastes and cities.

Viruses will have variable categories of a) stats affected (negative only) b) latency period and c)contageousness (AoE area).

Drugs will have variable categories of a) stats affected and b)addiction level.

Drugs and viruses will have both weaponized and naturally-occuring methods of affliction.

Virus Crafting:

So...getting warmer?

 

[Sovy Kurosei]

I was going more for the "if you're wounded, then you're more vulnerable" type of situation with the variable regen rates.

You are already vunerable enough as it is with reduced hit points.

The quesion becomes..is faster combat a good thing?..or would you rather have more strategic combat?

Given that the game is real time I don't think strategic combat is a serious option. Also the combat isn't exactly faster, it just means that there is less downtime for the player to deal with. It isn't exactly as though the two are mutually exclusive either. Unless your regeneration rate is going to be crazy fast and "in combat" then doing something stupid (ie zerging) is going to give poor results.

 

[DarkSign]

Ok. The Regen scheme is out the door. Good call.

I do think you can have strategic combat but thats fodder for another thread.

Right now Im wondering whether I should incorporate "weaponized" drugs - which would effectively be debuffs - to a post-apocalyptic FPS game.

Thoughts? Not only on debuffs but on the medical scheme in general?

 

[Balor]

Weaponized drugs?
Why not instant death poisons instead?
Much more bang for same buck (meaning, delivery system - inhale, injection). Unless you want to incapacitate your opponent.
Or, wait, a gas grenade that throws people into killing frenzy, launched into a crowd of enemies... delicious!
Anyway, in a perfect world, there would be no "HP system" at all.
You'll have injury system, where each wound is calculated in terms of effects, time to heal, bleeding, etc - separately.
And treated, with medical skill - also separately.
Perhaps, using specialized instruments.
And blood levels would be very important - with usage of blood packs (of appropriate blood type) to restore it.
But since we don't live in a perfect world... *shrug*

 

[DarkSign]

Balor I remember you speaking of your MUD where you were doing an injury system.

Our system is kind of like what you are taking about.

The HP system is made up of 6 or 8 body sections, each with their own hitpoints andtheir own effects when damaged.

This is part of the reason why we needed the criticals system so that you can repair different body parts.

For the record, Im against having buffs and such in a post-apoc game...so weaponized chemicals/drugs wouldnt be my first thought either.

 

[Balor]

Oh, that's good, I guess.
The question is, the 'treadmill' nature of mmorgs usually tend to nulify all efforts of making gameplay more diverse (or even make them harmful).
Anyway, I hope you'll manage to overcome this... or don't really hope for WoW-like, but for Fallout-like popularity, heh.
First one will give you a lot of money, seconds one - reputation of saint (not that one you mention in your sig, heh).
Choose what fits you best.
Edit:
Oh, and if you'll be extra 'lucky', you'll have not simply saintly reputation, but reputation of a martyr as well, he-he.

 

[DarkSign]

Id rather have a Fallout-like reputation with WoW money..but I'll just strive for the first and be grateful.

Im wondering if surgery would be fun as a little mini-game...kind of like one of those "Pipes" games where you have to connect the pipes in the right order to advance to the next level.

If it was short enough and didnt damage gameplay perhaps it would be fun to replace the pipes with arteries or blood vessels