Remove Sleep-Healing

[Anonymous]

I would like to see the sleep-healing phenomenon removed from the game.

I think it should remain that after a point (which should stay the same) your HP doesn't go back up, but take away the fact that you can "sleep it off."

Then add an NPC in the Viv temple in Allanak that you can pay for healing. Make it something like 200 sids, flat rate.

Add NPCs in Allanak and Tuluk that will bandage you up for 300 or 350 sids. Bandages are expensive after all, and these guys would use the good kind.

I think this would place a lot more value on the Bandage skill and the Physician sub-guild. Houses will want to hire healers, and hunters will want to make friends with them. It should also reduce cases of over huntering and over sparring. Plus... isn't it just more realistic?

Thoughts, opinions and critiques?

[Sholdyn]

Oops... Thought I was logged in.

[JollyGreenGiant]

We need more ways to die?   :shock:

Actually, I like the idea. Rather than eliminating the ability to "sleep it off" entirely, though, I'd just add an extra range, so that from 1-25% of your total hp, you'd have to get a healer of some kind, from 26-50% you can recover if you sleep, and from 51-100% you'll recover normally while awake. (Note: percentages are just for illustration purposes. I have no idea what the actual breakpoint is in game for not recovering normally is.)

[daedroug]

yeah really it's easy enough to die as it is. and I doubt you want to make a new hunter and then come close to death while killing somthing and then have to pay 300 sid to fix yerself up

[JohnGalt]

Zalanthans are not typically humanoids.  They have an accelerated healing rate.  Certain injuries however are beyond this genetic improvement, and will require magicks or in some cases a skilled physician to properly heal.  

From an OOC standpoint, the game is harsh enough.  There are plenty of ways to die in less than 10 seconds (I've experienced several of them) and I don't think we need to add to the difficulty.  I completely support people who roleplay being injured however, I think it's a great opportunity to roleplay how your character deals with pain/loss/misfortune.

[Sholdyn]

Yeah... ok.. I admit that it's a drastic idea, but I like JollyGreenGiant's idea. I just really think healing arts should worth something more than they are. Especially in a House when it's so easy to just lie on a bunk and sleep until your HP goes up. Houses should be able to employ healers. And virtual healing is fine-and-dandy, but it takes away from the value PC healers. *shrug*

[Marauder Moe]

I agree the PC healers are pretty useless, which is probably why there are so few of them, which makes it extremely annoying when you have someone who's actually RPing an injury and won't sleep it off but you can't find a PC healer.

I think the bandage skill needs to be reworked.  It needs to start higher or make *failure* mean you only heal 1hp or something.  As it is now, there's really no way to train it because your friends will yell and scream that it hurts when you touch them.

I also agree that there need to be NPC healers and that the Vivadu temple NPC should sell healing magick services.  Maybe even take it a step further and have medic NPCs in clan barracks.

If these changes or something similar were implemented, then I'd agree that sleep-healing could be reduced or taken away.

[EvilRoeSlade]

Once we get to the point where we have physician as a main class, we might be able to discuss this relic of the game's H&S days.

The fact is, this is definitely a bit of code that the game can do without, but I don't think we're quite at the point where we can get rid of this crutch.

[Savak]

I'm more in favor of this sort of thing than I used to be.  Personally I wouldn't be remiss if "sleep" didn't automatically heal -everything- from 0-max.  On the other hand, barring infection, most physical injuries (the ones non-fatal in the short term, unlike major arterial injuries) really do just take time to heal.  I still like the idea of the scarred desert hermit who takes care of themselves.  But if someone is conscious while at < 10% or so of their available hitpoints, I like the idea of requiring someone else to help them out, or a negative modifier to bandaging themselves.

[Anonymous]

I agree with what ERS said, for the most part, bandaging isn't where it is to make this viable.  As it stands I would imagine that doing this would result in PCs wandering around at 5hp for days trying to find a healer.

In addition, there should be some offline or 'long-duration' self-healing.  Something less than 24 hours but more than 5 minutes whereby a PC who has survived a rough fight is fully healed without sleeping or bandaging.

[amoeba]

I don't like the insta-sleep cure as well, but I like the present alternatives less.  I also have little faith in the tear it down and things will grow in it's place approach.  Far too much wishful thinking and a change like this has a -serious- impact on the game.  

Things need to be in place before this happens.  The houses, and nobles are easy. Have a coded physician somewhere.  Most already have a medic type NPC. Independants are much, much harder.  As a newbie hunter/wanderer you are -very- likely to get down to the needing sleep stage.  Newbie independents (and I mean this in the term of a new character, not player) have very few resources. If you did not heal, you are screwed, badly.  Access to healers is not often an option, and bandages as they are presently implemented are damn scary instruments of tortrue.

Not curing fully from sleep can have as big an impact on roleplay as does permadeath.  Namely it will change the behaviour of the players.  Without the obsticales to healing being inplace, it would most likely reduce conflict, as people will be too afraid of getting to a point where they could not heal.

[jhunter]

I'm in favor of a change along these lines. But, as others have pointed out, there are many things that would have to be changed to fit this in so that it was both realistic -and- playable.

[bloodfromstone]

There would have to be a lot more changed along with it. I would weep for the independant population if this went in without some serious tweaking. There should be great advantages to playing in organized groups, but the code shouldn't force people into it.

[Armaddict]

Bandage seems to be the problem thusfar...perhaps the skill will get some attention later.

Maybe only a critical fail should actually -harm- who you're trying to help out, but do a lot more harm.

A failed bandage could be just sloppy...no harm, but no help either.  Use bandage skill again to remove that bandage (with another chance to critical fail), then redo it.

Or something like that.  But the bandage skill as is, is just far too useless -and- expensive for that limited benefit you gain.

As to the sleeping...the immortals slowed down regeneration rates partially because of the sleep-healing-reattacking deal or something, didn't they?  I could be mistaken, that's just a guess.  This is kind of a long-time problem, but in order to fix it well would probably require a lot of code and revamping to make it actually worthwhile.  Broken bone as opposed to an arrow wound.  One will likely heal with time unless there's festering, and the other can heal but has a probability of healing incorrectly and leaving the victim debilitated.  The level of detail required is kind of in the way of fixing this.

My other example...one of those close fights you see from time to time, where nicks and grazes are all that occur.  Perhaps the occasional light hit.  One runs away, sits down...but they waited too long to flee.  For some reason, those little cuts and bruises can't heal unless you fall asleep?  Should nicks/grazes only even be -able- to get you to that point of not being able to heal?

Kind of a deeper dilemma than I thought, just some quick thoughts.

[Synthesis]

I can already foresee one unintended consequence if something like this system were implemented.

PC healers would still be largely useless, because people would simply change their behavior to completely avoid danger.  Barring completely unforseen circumstances, nobody would ever drop below their healing range.  (Already, this rarely happens, except for newbie players...which is one reason most people don't have any -skill- with bandaging.)

Even then, the vast majority of people getting grievously injured would be new PCs, since their low skill levels ultimately translate into a large degree of uncertainty in combat situations.  The problem here is that those who would be most in need of PC (or NPC) healers will be those who are least likely to be able to pay for such services.  This would further lead to people: 1) Suiciding characters with poor stats and 2) Suiciding characters who fall victim to excessive damage early on in their careers.  1 because characters with good stats will be less likely to get mauled in combat (agility becomes even -more- important than it already is) and 2 because getting healed will either be too costly or simply impossible (for outlaws, iso-clans, and off-peak players).

Of course, I'm not saying veteran PCs don't get seriously injured, but it doesn't happen often enough to support a PC healer economy.

Now, allow me to add that I think the current damage system is definitely wonky, and something should be done to fix it.  What that fix might be, I have no idea.

[Anael]

How about a middle way: You can sleep off only X hp per day.  If X was 5% of max, it'd take 5 in game days to heal a wound that took you down to 25%. Then you'd reach 50% of your health and from that point, you'd heal even awake, as normal.
PS: same as JGG, these numbers are only examples.

[Puppet]

I can already foresee one unintended consequence if something like this system were implemented.

PC healers would still be largely useless, because people would simply change their behavior to completely avoid danger.

I just wanted to comment on this.

Why is that a bad thing? Shouldn't most people avoid danger? I think it'd be a good thing if people who normally wouldn't be so reckless, no longer jumped headlong into harms way.

I kind of like the idea. I think there would need to be some balance so that it was still playable, but I agree that people shouldn't be able to restore their health from 0 to max in about 3 minutes.

[Ghost]

Playability.

[amoeba]

Why is that a bad thing? Shouldn't most people avoid danger? I think it'd be a good thing if people who normally wouldn't be so reckless, no longer jumped headlong into harms way.

Better for the character living a long life, but concidering that conflict and suspense is what makes a story interesting, having people be more cautious and reducing conflict is counterproductive to those goals.

[Puppet]

I don't really think conflict/suspense and throwing yourself in coded damage's way are really conducive to one another. You want somone beat up, but they're bigger and meaner than you? Go find a PC who's bigger and meaner than them and pay them to do it, or you know, just take the risk. There is nothing wrong with a little reinforced caution, in my opinion.

[jhunter]

I don't really think conflict/suspense and throwing yourself in coded damage's way are really conducive to one another. You want somone beat up, but they're bigger and meaner than you? Go find a PC who's bigger and meaner than them and pay them to do it, or you know, just take the risk. There is nothing wrong with a little reinforced caution, in my opinion.

And where are you going to find the one that's going to take a chance on themselves getting hurt -for you- if things are this way? I doubt you will be able to find anyone or it will be very very hard. This would cut down conflict bigtime. Personally, if it became that bad. I'd stop playing.

[Ghost]

And where are you going to find the one that's going to take a chance on themselves getting hurt -for you- if things are this way? I doubt you will be able to find anyone or it will be very very hard.

I agree.  That is probably why it is not easy to find a tough guy or a skilled assassin to do your dirty work EVEN now.  The reason is currently the crime code, mostly.  And this idea will add more to the downside of things.

[LoD]

One of the major factors that comes into all of these discussions about how we treat damage to our characters is the source.

Until the MUD tracks the source of the damage to a PC, any blanket solution affecting the regeneration rate of health will be difficult to accept.  Here are a few of the problems with someone losing 60 health:

-Lost health by slow acting burn poison.
-Lost health by training with blunt sparring weapons.
-Lost health by sharp live weapons.
-Lost health by falling.
-Lost health by magickal fire/lightning/health draining
-Lost health by torture.
-Lost health by animal bite.
-Lost health by animal venom.

The problem is the code cannot differentiate between sources of damage and everyone who loses 60% of their health "does not look well" and is "bleeding heavily" as a standard room description.  They may have taken 30 blunt strikes to armor and have broken ribs, internal bleeding, blunt head trauma, etc...and still be "bleeding heavily".

This is where playability comes in as an arguement.  This topic wouldn't be coming up unless someone thought it was a big problem.  And since we're selfish and arrogant creatures, we probably aren't talking about our own RP, but that of another player who's character was hurt and suddenly acting fine within a few game hours.  We've all seen it.

The half-giant hits inflicts a grevious wound to the man's head.
The man flees.
The man says, "I'm gonna get some rest."
The man leaves.
The man returns.
The original poster says, "Why are you back here?"
The man says, "I slept an hour and I'm better.  I feel fine."

I highly doubt any of us want to be forced to RP out wounds.  We want the choice of doing so, and rightly so.  Adding some kind of middle layer of healing would bring depth and some accountability to the game.

I'd second the motion of allowing 60% regen to happen normally (while awake or asleep) while requiring 61+% damage to require SOME form of treatment by a "physician" skill be that bandage or a new idea.  It would be even cooler if the source of damage was factored into the mix (i.e. poison, magick, weapon, animal) which would effect the tool to be used.

-LoD

[Cenghiz]

I would love to have -in the least- a virtual physician NPC in Tuluk in a central place.. Like a rugged veteran in Tembo's Tooth.. So we can at least pay him the price, get healed virtually and then go home and 'sleep it off'.

[Halaster]

Just my opinion, but I think the biggest reason we haven't gotten more "gritty" and "realistic" is for playability sake more than anything.  I'd rather see people interacting, doing things, driving plots - whatever - and not just laying around having to heal up.  Let's face it, who wants to spend 2 hours doing nothing while you heal?

Having said that, I think LoD put it well in that we currently have the option of roleplaying wounds if we choose.  If you think you've healed up too fast, that's fine, you can play out an injury that lasts longer than it is.  I'd personally rather let people have that option as opposed to force in on them.

Again, as LoD says, to make this really work well, we'd have to do a lot more, such as damage type.  While I think anyone would love to see it - that sure would be one serious-big project...

[Raesanos]

I think the idea of changing how you get healed, rather than making it simply harder, is interesting. What if you didn't heal from sleeping, but bandaging was significantly easier, so a decent healer would have a very high chance of helping you out? I like ideas that are more realistic without too much hassle. Don't take this as a suggestion that we're considering any such change at the moment.

[HardCarbon]

I think the idea of changing how you get healed, rather than making it simply harder, is interesting. What if you didn't heal from sleeping, but bandaging was significantly easier, so a decent healer would have a very high chance of helping you out? I like ideas that are more realistic without too much hassle. Don't take this as a suggestion that we're considering any such change at the moment.

 A note..   cost.. bandages are expensive....    Perhaps make bandaging/healing  a  HOT affect??  is... if a healer is careing for you in an appropriate place.. you heal faster?

[Larrath]

Making bandaging easier and making people need to depend on them (and possibly NPC physicians in some clans) would be good.
Bandages aren't that expensive now that you can salvage bandages from useless crap.

I don't think this would harm playability too much, either.  Without bandaging, it would be possible to heal super-serious wounds at up to 2 hitpoints per regen tick, so it would take a long time but not be impossible.

Also, I'd like to see another change: if someone is bandaged and they enter combat within two IC hours of being bandaged, there would be a chance of their bandage getting torn out and dealing half of the damage the bandage healed.
This would prevent people bandaging on the battlefield only to leap back in, which could replace five second naps between gith-hunting.  It would also make magickal healing more desireable, because when a magicker fixes you up you can jump right back in.

[HardCarbon]

Ahhh nice change.. I just recall bandage making as one of those .. 'useless' skills where its cheaper to just buy the fecking things.

Making bandaging easier and making people need to depend on them (and possibly NPC physicians in some clans) would be good.
Bandages aren't that expensive now that you can salvage bandages from useless crap.

I don't think this would harm playability too much, either.  Without bandaging, it would be possible to heal super-serious wounds at up to 2 hitpoints per regen tick, so it would take a long time but not be impossible.

Also, I'd like to see another change: if someone is bandaged and they enter combat within two IC hours of being bandaged, there would be a chance of their bandage getting torn out and dealing half of the damage the bandage healed.
This would prevent people bandaging on the battlefield only to leap back in, which could replace five second naps between gith-hunting.  It would also make magickal healing more desireable, because when a magicker fixes you up you can jump right back in.

[Salt Merchant]

Why is that a bad thing? Shouldn't most people avoid danger? I think it'd be a good thing if people who normally wouldn't be so reckless, no longer jumped headlong into harms way.

Makes me wonder if you play a noble or templar and are eager for new characters to abuse.  :lol:  Do you want Arm to turn into a population of tavern sitters? Eliminating sleep-healing is no different that slashing people's hitpoints by 40%, really, except that you'd have a few walking corpses around.

[Larrath]

Why is that a bad thing? Shouldn't most people avoid danger? I think it'd be a good thing if people who normally wouldn't be so reckless, no longer jumped headlong into harms way.

Makes me wonder if you play a noble or templar and are eager for new characters to abuse.  :lol:  Do you want Arm to turn into a population of tavern sitters? Eliminating sleep-healing is no different that slashing people's hitpoints by 40%, really, except that you'd have a few walking corpses around.

I would like Arm to not be a place where people can go hunt until they get beaten down to 30-some hitpoints out of their max of 110, sleep in a cave for five minutes and then kill another fifty scrabs, giths, vestrics and whatever else they run into.  I would like Arm to be a place where serious injuries are taken seriously by everyone, not only because it's realistic roleplay because they actually -would- be serious.

[Anael]

That's one thing I like on how SoI or Harshlands work. About the only thing, actually.

[jhunter]

Why is that a bad thing? Shouldn't most people avoid danger? I think it'd be a good thing if people who normally wouldn't be so reckless, no longer jumped headlong into harms way.

Makes me wonder if you play a noble or templar and are eager for new characters to abuse.  :lol:  Do you want Arm to turn into a population of tavern sitters? Eliminating sleep-healing is no different that slashing people's hitpoints by 40%, really, except that you'd have a few walking corpses around.

I would like Arm to not be a place where people can go hunt until they get beaten down to 30-some hitpoints out of their max of 110, sleep in a cave for five minutes and then kill another fifty scrabs, giths, vestrics and whatever else they run into.  I would like Arm to be a place where serious injuries are taken seriously by everyone, not only because it's realistic roleplay because they actually -would- be serious.

I'd prefer that it's open for people to display their roleplaying ability rather than have the code enforce that for them.
The people that do this are usually few and far between or new to the game. The imms to a good job of throwing down some consequences for actions like that. I really rarely see it and don't believe it's such an issue.

[jhunter]

I just wanted to add: Remember, the more tightly we cinch everything down with code the less "gray area" there is to rp in. I think SOI went too far in cinching everything down with code and that's mainly why I didn't keep playing it.

I personally like the fact that we have plenty of "gray area" to make our own decisions about how we want to play something. So what if some people choose to play unrealistically? They won't do it for long I'm certain of that.

[Sholdyn]

Although realism is certainly an issue that you can raise on this topic, I think the real goal of something like this should be to add value to one area of the game without taking value away from another. Namely, add value to PC healers, but the only thing your taking away is a script.

So, if removing sleep healing entirely is a bad idea, then are there any other ways to add value to this area of the game? I think some good ideas have already been posted.

[jhunter]

I think that healing via sleep should be slowed down to a rate where it may take you an entire IC day to recover to the point of being able to heal without sleeping. Then, make bandaging a bit less difficult and remove the damage through failure completely. Make it so that a failure just fails to recover any hp instead.

After that, then perhaps come up with a way so that when you are taken down by other sorts of damage...poisons, many small cuts and grazing nicks, etc... things work a bit differently.

[Twilight]

The learning for bandage would need to be rebalanced, because as it stands now it is only balanced really because you get damaged if you fail, but:

(numbers are hypothetical) If you want to increase the usefulness of bandage:  Lets say you are 100HP warrior, and just lost 75 hps.  Your friend then attempts to bandage you, but fails and takes off another 5 hps.  A flag is added to your character "Bandage_30".  You are now at 20 hps.  Your friend tries again, and you loose another 5 hps.  The flag on your character is updated to "Bandage_65".  You are now at 15 hps.  Your friend tries again (it was a big wound) and fails (geez!) and you loose 10 hps!  However, your flag is now "Bandage_103".  You have 5 hps, but now you are regenning while not sleeping, because you have been bandaged up enough.

The way the bandage flag on your character would work is that it when the number on it plus your current hps exeeded your max hps, you would start to regen hps while not sleeping.  Each bandaging attempt would modify this number upwards, whether successful or not (although successful would probably modify it more) such that on average 3 failures would get a human regening again.  Obviously, bigger humanoids such as half giants would normally require more bandaging (because of higher hps).  The flag would stay on your character, through renting, and would either slowly decay, or just get removed entirely once you reach the point at which you can normally heal without sleeping.  Each one point of damage taken would reduce the number by 10, so 10 hps of damage would remove a Bandage_100 flag entirely.  Healing due to the flag would be slower (50%? 25%? 10%?) than normal.

[Salt Merchant]

I would like Arm to not be a place where people can go hunt until they get beaten down to 30-some hitpoints out of their max of 110, sleep in a cave for five minutes and then kill another fifty scrabs, giths, vestrics and whatever else they run into.  I would like Arm to be a place where serious injuries are taken seriously by everyone, not only because it's realistic roleplay because they actually -would- be serious.

Then by all means go ahead and roleplay this way, if you like. Sit in your barracks or wherever and emote messages of pain for a day and a half real-life. And when you get terminally bored with that, avoid all combat like the plague to avoid having to sit the game out for RL days again.

Just don't try to force it on others, especially in the name of realism. What is realism anyway, when you have magickers, defilers, demons and drakes flying around? When you have people telepathically communicating across great distances? When you have half-giants, halflings and mantii claiming portions of the "civilized" world? I don't find fast healing to be such a stretch, especially when it increases playability.

My current character is eight days old and hasn't killed a fecking thing in his life, so I'm not speaking out of a desire to support wilderness rampages and scrab kill sprees. I suspect you'd already be hard pressed to find people behaving the way you describe these days, without making it more difficult for them.

But don't listen to me. Read Halaster's own words instead:

I think the biggest reason we haven't gotten more "gritty" and "realistic" is for playability sake more than anything. I'd rather see people interacting, doing things, driving plots - whatever - and not just laying around having to heal up. Let's face it, who wants to spend 2 hours doing nothing while you heal?

[ale six]

Then by all means go ahead and roleplay this way, if you like. Sit in your barracks or wherever and emote messages of pain for a day and a half real-life. And when you get terminally bored with that, avoid all combat like the plague to avoid having to sit the game out for RL days again.

It's funny you say this. One of my PCs had the unfortunate luck to nearly get herself killed about three times, in a variety of ways. In each instance I -did- take her out of action and lay her up for a number of RL days. I emoted being crippled, walking around with a cane, having scars, emotional trauma, etc. And I enjoyed it. It brought out aspects of the character I really never would have otherwise considered. I didn't do this out of some unwavering homage to realism, I did it because well, the poor girl had just been cuddled by a silt horror (to use an example) and I didn't really feel like she'd get over that in the ten minutes it took me to sleep back to full hp.

The healing rate that sleeping gives you just strikes me as silly. I'd love to see more opportunities for pcs to heal people. But past that, I'd just like to see more people actually roleplaying taking a few IC weeks downtime after taking serious wounds. You never know how fun it can be until you try.

[Salt Merchant]

The healing rate that sleeping gives you just strikes me as silly. I'd love to see more opportunities for pcs to heal people. But past that, I'd just like to see more people actually roleplaying taking a few IC weeks downtime after taking serious wounds. You never know how fun it can be until you try.

For those who like it, go ahead. I've done it once, and although it wasn't horrible, sitting for hours in an empty room wasn't really a great way to pass the time, either. If it happened again and there was some kind of code-enforced waiting period, I'd likely just log off and do something else until it was over. Effectively a mini-death. Joy.

[Stroker]

For those who like it, go ahead. I've done it once, and although it wasn't horrible, sitting for hours in an empty room wasn't really a great way to pass the time, either. If it happened again and there was some kind of code-enforced waiting period, I'd likely just log off and do something else until it was over. Effectively a mini-death. Joy.

Finally, someone points out the futility of this entire proposition: the players cannot be forced into role-playing by means of coded limitations. If anything, the process will LOWER the quality/quantity of role-play, which is already rather unimpressive.

Semper Pax,

Dirr

[jmordetsky]

I don't think I'd like to see sleep heal removed.

I think I'd like to see the following rules though:

1) Very low levels of HP being "harder" to recover from, unless some healing was applied.

2) A chance of Bloodloss and death from critical wounds. As of now, if I get critically injured, I know I'm going to live if nothing finds me. It's not much of a thrill. But if there was a 30% chance I might die, that would be pretty cool.

3) More Mercy. While I'd like to see wounds take longer (not much longer mind you) I'd like to see a Mercy percentage so that I didn't have a chance of complete kicking the shit out of someone in sparring. Like Mercy High, Mercy Low, Mercy. Which stopped combat early if need be, and caused me to flee or disengage or something.