Critical hit system

[TheChoccoBiccy09]

I reckon the critical hit system is good and all but when you get hit it’s just really easy to cure. Fatigue=Vatimans. Concussion=pain killers.
Laceration= sewing kit
I think it’s just too easy to heal critically hits and it doesn’t really offer to much to the game at this point. The one exception however is the broken limbs. You can splint them to speed up recovery but you still have the symptoms of a broken leg/arm that you have to take into consideration. If you want to heal it completely you need a cast and I’m pretty sure that’s a late game item. So is the other critical hits going to be similar to broken limbs where you can find a simple cure quick but still have to take some of the negative effects of the injury for some time, unless you have a great healing item that is hard to get but heals it instantly?

[Derpykat5]

There's just too much of every healing item mid-late game to make any sort of injury that doesn't end your life before you even have a chance to heal much of an issue.

As I related to my friend; "instead of just applying a medkit, eating honey and shrugging it off, you apply a medkit, splint, painkillers, and antibiotics and shrug it off."

It really hurts early game, but without making medical items more scarce no sort of injury system would matter late game.

[TheChoccoBiccy09]

Originally posted by derpykat5:

There's just too much of every healing item mid-late game to make any sort of injury that doesn't end your life before you even have a chance to heal much of an issue.

As I related to my friend; "instead of just applying a medkit, eating honey and shrugging it off, you apply a medkit, splint, painkillers, and antibiotics and shrug it off."

It really hurts early game, but without making medical items more scarce no sort of injury system would matter late game.

Of course, if the fun pimps are going to add in a brand new system, they gotta tweak other stuff as well (that being medical items) to actually make the crit system worth being in the game

[CellNav]

Originally posted by TheChoccoBiccy09:

I reckon the critical hit system is good and all but when you get hit it’s just really easy to cure. Fatigue=Vatimans. Concussion=pain killers.
Laceration= sewing kit

I have an off-the-wall suggestion ...

The player can perform field medicine (i.e. to treat the injury), but the injury doesn't have a "countdown to heal", meaning it requires ... Doctor Jen ... to treat the inujury at which point it begins it's countdown to recovery.

Where is Doctor Jen? .... Simple, ask the trader and he'll point you (like we just finished a tier quest) to Doctor Jen, but with a separate dialog that appears when we have an injury (or infected).

Yeah, but WHERE is Doctor Jen? .... She's no longer a trader, but she's actually in a more proper POI, and we can guess that POI ... The hospital POI, with a new wall and a nice door and all the same protection systems invoked, and most importantly ... open 24/7.

Doctor McCoy in Star Trek might say : "Dammit Jim, you're a brick layer, NOT a doctor !!!"

With that in mind, who has all the drugs and meds? .... Doctor Jen, not in loot. That means the best we can craft is a first-aid bandage because we ain't no doctor, we're just a chumpy zombie slayer who like's to play with blocks ... that's all.

[RasaNova]

Originally posted by CellNav:

Originally posted by TheChoccoBiccy09:

I reckon the critical hit system is good and all but when you get hit it’s just really easy to cure. Fatigue=Vatimans. Concussion=pain killers.
Laceration= sewing kit

I have an off-the-wall suggestion ...

The player can perform field medicine (i.e. to treat the injury), but the injury doesn't have a "countdown to heal", meaning it requires ... Doctor Jen ... to treat the inujury at which point it begins it's countdown to recovery.

Where is Doctor Jen? .... Simple, ask the trader and he'll point you (like we just finished a tier quest) to Doctor Jen, but with a separate dialog that appears when we have an injury (or infected).

Yeah, but WHERE is Doctor Jen? .... She's no longer a trader, but she's actually in a more proper POI, and we can guess that POI ... The hospital POI, with a new wall and a nice door and all the same protection systems invoked, and most importantly ... open 24/7.

Doctor McCoy in Star Trek might say : "Dammit Jim, you're a brick layer, NOT a doctor !!!"

With that in mind, who has all the drugs and meds? .... Doctor Jen, not in loot. That means the best we can craft is a first-aid bandage because we ain't no doctor, we're just a chumpy zombie slayer who like's to play with blocks ... that's all.

hmm... That's a cool idea, and ties right in to my hopes of a more fleshed out NPC system. The doctor could be a member in a white river settlement, along with other NPCs like a trader, a farmer, a contractor, a security specialist, and of course an agent of the Duke...

But then, I would hope to see the doctor skill accomplish the ssme thing.

[CellNav]

Originally posted by RasaNova:

But then, I would hope to see the doctor skill accomplish the ssme thing.

I think I might have the solution to that Rasa, with the old saying :

"You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours".

To advance towards a doctor's skill, we run quests for Doctor Jen. Each tier we complete will give us a level up towards the doctor's skill (or perhaps schematics, whatever). That can work for other professional NPC's in the community. Player's can get what they want (with a bit of hard work), and we don't have to worry about juggling the RNG against skill expenditure (i.e. why waste points being a doctor when the schematic might drop in loot).

The important part is that we really won't be a doctor, but a combat medic. The injury we treat with a better doctor skill would mean the injury won't flare up (lower chance) but it still needs the attention of a professional to remove the injury all together (i.e. the broken bone needs to be set properly). The length of time for the nuisance of the injury depends on the player's tolerance for the nuisance, and can be solved now or later with no guess work.

Dumping RNG loot to solve the nuisance doesn't seem to work at the moment. Either we don't get it or we have enough to solve our problems for eternity (which is the case mid-late game). Early game resolution entails lost time (to go see the doctor), that's all. Late game means we blow off visiting the doctor because we have more important things to do, and the injury will hold out long enough (with a good medic skill) so we don't have to worry about it that much at the moment.

Look at early infection ... Ok, we can go see Doctor Jen but on our way we hit every tree stump for honey. The good news is that we will either get the honey (from the stump), and if we don't then we get the honey from the honey (so to speak) eventually. The latter causing a much bigger delay in our plans. So, RNG can still screw us, but not break the game.

Oh, and lets say the honey doesn't have any honey? Holy crap, now what? Simple, run quest (say a buried supply) and do an absolute (but with further delay) to solve our problem.

When it comes to scratching the proverbial back, we pretty much scratch the RNG's back in the right place (hopefully) ... :P

[Sterling]

If we're speculating on that route, the player's skills should focus on first aid and not actual treatment (unless you find medical books which could help us learn to properly treat injuries like lacerations and broken limbs).

For example, say you break your leg by falling. Yeah, you could apply a splint but that would be a stop gap. You'd never get better with a makeshift splint unless you properly reset the bone and applied a cast. The doctor could do that no problem and start the timer, plus a cast would prevent further injury since it's hard. If you found a medical book, you could craft a cast from a splint with paper and glue and apply it properly.

Same goes for stuff like concussions. A painkiller would relieve the nasty effects for a while then the concussion would stick around afterward until you got to a doctor and had a proper treatment.

Simple stuff like sprains and abrasions could be treated no problem with first aid. I could see the player being able to learn how to do that quite easily out of necessity with skill points. Pop a point into first aid and you'll be able to treat minor injuries easily and stave off the nasty side effects of more serious ones for longer.

As for the zombie infection, I don't think I've ever come close to dying from one. It more of an annoyance than anything serious like a critical injury is. I kind of wish it was more serious, but on the other hand I don't think it'd bother me if they removed the mechanic entirely and just said the player was part of the few immune to the virus itself. Or alternatively they just made it a normal infection caused by improper treatment of a critical wound and made it more deadly like cutting your HP in half every stage of the infection.

[CellNav]

Originally posted by Sterling:

If we're speculating on that route, the player's skills should focus on first aid and not actual treatment (unless you find medical books which could help us learn to properly treat injuries like lacerations and broken limbs).

Yeah, and it could also work like infections where the first aid that we apply needs to be applied again (put a fresh bandage on), so the timer could just count down to when we need to replace the old treatment with another treatment. (i.e. It's like we only have honey to cure 5% but our infection is 30% so we need more treatment to cure the problem).

Skill with medicine reduces the number of subsequent applications of treatment, meaning that we can still eventually solve the critical wound nuisance with a doctor's skill or not bother putting points in that skill and let Doctor Jen remove the nuisance.

Btw, Doctor Jen's voice dialog seems to imply that she is treating us like a patience and she cured our injury, which is odd considering her position as a trader ... example dialog :

"Thanks for letting me take care of you. Tell your friends."

(Is she just a place card for now?)