Idea, movement lag based on near death experiences.

[JRB]

I'm sure everyone here played Everquest at some point in time.  One thing I saw in the game that would be a nifty addition here.    In everquest when you became seriously wounded you couldn't run as fast.  I purpose a movement command lag while walking, running, sneaking in addition to any movement lag that already exists.  I dunno if this has been discussed before imposed on pcs are reduced to



20% 1 seconds extra movement lag
15% 3 seconds extra movement lag
10% 6 seconds of movement lag
5% or less 10 seconds of movement lag

I would purpose that this movement lag be a cooldown levied against movement and no other commands, however.
Pretty much you get that low anyhow you most likely not going to be able to run away.  Of course when you were healed up this would go away.

[Nao]

Me likes - that's more than nifty, the penalty could be less while you'Re meounted, but stuill exist - that really makes sense, you aren't gonna sprint away from that scrab or raider when you're half-dead...

Might take away some playability though, exspecially for outdoorsy hunter types that already have a rough life.

[jstorrie]

As a counterexample, though, let's not forget the crazy things that people can accomplish while in shock.

[JRB]

Shock is one thing, but I'm talking about trauma.  When your blood pressure suddenly drops to half what it normally is, you just don't feel like running a marathon.

[Aldiel]

I'm sure everyone here played Everquest at some point in time.  One thing I saw in the game that would be a nifty addition here.    In everquest when you became seriously wounded you couldn't run as fast.  I purpose a movement command lag while walking, running, sneaking in addition to any movement lag that already exists.  I dunno if this has been discussed before imposed on pcs are reduced to



20% 1 seconds extra movement lag
15% 3 seconds extra movement lag
10% 6 seconds of movement lag
5% or less 10 seconds of movement lag

I would purpose that this movement lag be a cooldown levied against movement and no other commands, however.
Pretty much you get that low anyhow you most likely not going to be able to run away.  Of course when you were healed up this would go away.

Yeah, I think this idea.  I personally think we should play more with movement, and I think basic movement should be slowed a hair too, but this would be a step in the right direction, I think.

[Aldiel]

Shock is one thing, but I'm talking about trauma.  When your blood pressure suddenly drops to half what it normally is, you just don't feel like running a marathon.

I agree.  Whether or not you've adrenaline in your veins or you're strung up on PCP, you'll still move slower with a broken leg than a healthy one.

[UnderSeven]

I mean I think it's kind of cool, but also I see some issues with it.  First off all, everquest unlike arm is very limited.  It's a hack slash, we're rp.  The point? While we both have one hp stat, in everquest you can pretty much assume it refers to raw damage, but not so much in arm.  For instance, you could be low on health for any number of reasons and not have a single visible wound on this game, or you could have all injuries to one part of your body, not related in any way to movement.  Maybe a big beast bites your arm hard and you're at very low health, hell maybe it bites your arm OFF, you should still be potientally able to run.

Another thing is if you read more into this and said, okay damage affecting performance based on injury location.  So then you might get injured legs on luck of the draw, well what if you want to defend there?  What if you want to aim at someone else' legs?

This are all fine ideas, but I'd personally be in favor of leaving our damage and health systems fairly simple, because one thing to keep in mind, everquest is a hack slash pk style game, where as we are a rp game first and foremost and these ideas I think drift into the realm of tactical hack slash.

Good idea though

[Folker]

I like that, but I have to say, it'll make a lot of first time encounters by newlies their last ones. I mean .... even those they sometimes survived.

[moab]

Difference between Everquest and here - permadeath.

It is useful to be able to run like krath when that Gith is about to smack your last 10hp off you.

[SpyGuy]

I like the idea but don't think it would work well.  Why?  Arm's combat system is very simplistic right now and open to easy interpretation.  Complicating it in any way threatens to throw off any sort of balance.  Now if body parts could be damaged/broken and the whole system was more complex something like this could be added that would make sense.  As it is though it's a nice idea but would be better off being tossed into the "good but not really workable" pile.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Once again, movement needs to be changed to reflect the actual distance traveled, perhaps not entirely accurately, but to a greater degree than it does currently.

It takes just as much time to travel four rooms in the desert as it does in the city. Not realistic. Not really groovy to me.

Lag is your friend sometimes.

[Ghost]

Actually, I do like the idea.  And as the original poster says, only if you are 20% of your max health or lower will this kick in.  It looks pretty playable in a sense, and pretty realistic as well.

But I can hear the people who opposes this idea.  The characters that are living in and around a city state will probably not be much scared with such a code addition, but renagades or desert dweller PCs will have to be more careful, as they are always being pushed by the dangers in the desert.

Maybe an additional idea might be, lets say you want to kick in for whatever your body can handle.  You are running all around without paying attention to your wounds?  Press something like "Run" and have the normal movement delay no matter what your hp is.  But additionally, lose 1 hp per the league you are moving.  I don't know, it just kind of popped up in my head.  Could get a better idea from here probably.

As a counterexample, though, let's not forget the crazy things that people can accomplish while in shock.

I guess this is true.  But this would not be a good example for a man running away in the game, for each league in the desert is more than 1.5 miles right?  Your adrenaline rush probably can make you forget about your wounds for 100m..200meters...500 meters... But I don't think it will work for anywhere near 1.5 miles.  It will not work, also such a boost of speed in such a condition will probably cause the victim to pass out.

All in all, I think it is a good idea.  I would like to see it in the game.  Though, if it gets to be voted to hurt the playability, I do understand that as well.

[Angela Christine]

Distances are just odd, and shouldn't be looked at too closely.

Yes, you probably shouldn't be able to run 20 miles while baddly injured.  However, an animal probably shouldn't chase you 20 miles either -- animals don't do that.  

As it is I've seen silt horrors just a few rooms from Allanak, way out of their territory and in an environment that should be unfamiliar and unpleasant to silt horrors.  If they were comfortable that far from the sea they would live there all the time.

As it is, a tracking animal will happily track you all the way from Luirs to Red Storm and then back up to Tuluk.  Even when it gets exhausted it won't give up and go home.  Instead it will stand around for a few minutes to regen some stamina, and then keep tracking you farther and farther away from its territory.





Personally, I look at damage differently than many people.  Since there isn't much health care available, being down to 10% of your health doesn't mean that you are near death and probably going into shock like it would in our world, instead it means that you are seriously wounded but can probably recover unaided as long as you don't take any new wounds.  Bandages are helpful, but not absolutely necessary.  You can get by without any antibiotics.  You do not require surgery.  Clearly your intestines are not dragging on the ground, because if that were the case you would require surgery -- which you aren't going to get.  You are hurt, and it should take you a few weeks to fully recover, but you will recover.

In effect, I imagine everyone has a phantom 50 hp below 0.  At 0 to -10 you are mortally wounded and may not recover without aid.  For me this is the place where your guts may be spilling into the sand.  Between -10 and -50 you might be revived by paramedics and linger in a coma for a while if you were in the intensive care ward of a modern hospital, or you might need surgery, transfusions and antibiotics to recover, but since you are in Zalanthas you are just dead.  It sucks to be in Zalanthas.


(Theoretically a magickal healer should be as good as a modern hospital and so he should have the possiblility of healing people who are at -38 hp, but since powerful magickal healers are rare I'm willing to ignore it.)


Angela Christine

[amoeba]

Distances are just odd, and shouldn't be looked at too closely.

I think sometimes people get too literal with distances.  One should take in the room description when evaluating distances.  Take for example the general assumption that an outdoor room is 1 league.  In areas, such as the salt flats, the grasslands ect., this makes perfect sense.  However in other areas the scale is wonky, for example a room described as a narrow canyon, or other places like the marketplace in Luirs, which is also an outdoor room.  One leauge here makes no sense.

Once again, movement needs to be changed to reflect the actual distance traveled, perhaps not entirely accurately, but to a greater degree than it does currently.

I can't say as I sgree with this.  Once again using a hard fast rule does not represent variablity.  I also feel that this is focused on the spam walker/runner, trying to -force- behaviour on them.  We already have a way to approximate travel times, it's called RP.  Forcing an increased delay does nothing to increase RP for those folks who won't do it anyway, all it will do is piss them off.  All we get from this is a warm and fuzzy that it takes longer.  Explain the benefit.

[LoD]

Perhaps I've turned a blind eye to posts of this type before, or simply been ignorant of volume of them in the past, but there seems to be this current trend of making everything more "realistic", and I really have to ask...

Why?

Have we run out of content topics?  Is there a rampant abuse of the system regarding healing one's wounds, moving between rooms, classes spamming their combat abilities, overuse of one's psionic capacity/efficiency, etc...?

Is it something similar to corporations who have employees with jobs that hinge on finding ways to improve or change the existing structure, even if those changes often don't make anything better -- just different, and sometimes worse?

This isn't an accusation, but a question.  In a gameworld that holds such things as magick potions, channeling "power" from an elemental plane, draining life from surrounding plants/animals for mana, talking swords, spell casting dragons, undead armies, vampires and more -- why the quibbling over these minute details of how far (or fast) someone can walk compared to your average human on Earth?

The game is loose because it is designed for RP, not because it's supposed to be a simulation of a real life desert excursion.  It's not intended to replicate biological or physiological scientific facts through hard code.  It doesn't adhere to the laws of physics, a standard system of metrics for distance between "rooms", or a "realistic" system of handling one's inventory by only allowing two hands to be used.

You could define every damage type from falling, poison, blunt trauma, stab wounds, disease, trampling, suffocation, burning and force the code along a complex and sophisticated model that interprets and allows or disallows certain actions (walking) or procedures (healing) based on the numbers ticking away behind the curtain.

You could come up with a standardized system of metrics for the distance of one 'room' to another, thus making travel in the gameworld more akin to that of our world where a foot is a foot and an inch is an inch despite how cumbersome or bulky that system may be.

You could code in disease, infection, blood loss, broken bones, internal bleeding, immune systems and the medication required to alleviate the symptoms or cure the victim.

You could shape a combat system based on real world examples of the duration of fights, severity of wounds, damage inflicted by particular weapons and have the game more closely mirror the speed at which death claims most in real combat.

But the more the code tells the story, the less we do.  The swifter our characters die to realistic situations, the less story remains to be told.  The faster the code requires us to comply, the less thought will be put into our actions.  The less freedom we have to interpret, the more routine our responses will be.

Perhaps it is a natural fear of change.  Perhaps it is an afternoon ramble.  But I neither desire nor invite such a world to supplant the environment which has already provided decades of great tales despite what some may consider 'unrealstic moments'.

This post is not in response to any recent game implementations, for I've yet to encouter them.  However, the seeming trend of constantly promoting realism in a fantasy world, low as some may claim it is, does concern me a little.

-LoD

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I beg semantics. I always have. I desire them and crave them. I always will.

So I'll always suggest more realistic implementations. It's not to stop twinks. It's to make the world more concrete. I don't even care if they go in or not. I will always suggest them.

I like the idea that a room in the desert takes you a bit to traverse. I like the idea that you can not travel, OOCly or ICly, on foot or kankback, from Tuluk to Allanak in a day. I like the idea that healers are needed, that you bleed from low HP if one does not attend you. I like the idea of hard, brutal battle, slowed down in rounds for more emote and command descision, but made more deadly by way of damage. I love the idea of animals chasing you away from nests and breeding and spawning correctly and NPCs in the city capapble of hold short convos about life.

I'll always suggest things, and I'll never worry about them going in or not. I don't think that getting worried about suggestions from the opinionated people of this community is really the thing to do. That's really all they are, suggestions. I'm personally pleased whenever I hear a new suggestion, whether I accept it or not, because it shows the imagination and creativity of the people we play with.

Who cares if they want to argue a little about it? How can it bother anyone not involved that much?

[Morgenes]

I think the argument that this is a fantasy game and so realism shouldn't be strived for is a farce.   Consistency and simulation are the key issues that drive changes that promote realism in a game like this.  Just because you have magick or fantastical creatures doesn't mean they can't adhere to a realistic rule set.  It's just the rule set is not that of the real world we (well at least most of us) live in.

Yes, there needs to be a balance between game play and realism.  I guarantee there will never be code that forces you to releive yourself every 12 hours or you'll start taking damage.

I personally don't think that the current set of changes are that far of a stretch.  There's existing code that says you get tired from physical activity.  Likewise, there's code that says that rooms outside the city are bigger and therefore make you more tired by passing through them.

As for the specific argument at hand, I think adding more lag to movement outside the city would be a game play unbalancer causing less people to bother leaving the city.  I think the movement lags are fine the way they are, I don't really see this change happening.

[LoD]

I think the argument that this is a fantasy game and so realism shouldn't be strived for is a farce.

I'm certainly not arguing that there is no cause to pursue elements of realism in the game because of it fantasy setting.  What I'm responding to is what I perceive as an increased frequency in the concern over its presence in the game on multiple levels.  It isn't a major concern, it isn't a call for people to stop making suggestions.  Perhaps it's a reply to this post, and others, that seem to argue that realism trumps playability.

As Morg mentioned, there are just parts of the game that aren't meant to be realistic because it makes them less playable.

At any rate, on the subject of movement, I wouldn't mind seeing delayed movement added into the game if the movement was reduced to 0.  It'd be nice to have the option to "crawl" somewhere, albeit very slowly, even when exhausted.  A large enough delay would likely disuade anyone from wanting to abuse it somehow, and it'd surely help in situations where you run out of stamina right outside the city gates on a hot day in the late afternoon.

It'd also be handy for folks who want to move while intoxicated and stop falling down.

-LoD

[Kalden]

The game is loose because it is designed for RP, not because it's supposed to be a simulation of a real life desert excursion. It's not intended to replicate biological or physiological scientific facts through hard code. It doesn't adhere to the laws of physics, a standard system of metrics for distance between "rooms", or a "realistic" system of handling one's inventory by only allowing two hands to be used.

I beg to differ. This game is loose because it was originally HnS. The RP happens, but it's in an HnS world in many ways.

I like the HnS world and code, it's entertaining, but it's not necessarily more conducive to RP - especially realistic RP, which is the highest quality RP. Realistic RP, however, is not always the most entertaining RP. The HnS world is more conducive to exciting RP.

It's like the difference between a realistic, high-quality movie and a slightly unrealistic, pop-culture entertaining movie. Goodfellas vrs Scarface, perhaps. Take your pick.[/b]

[LoD]

It's like the difference between a realistic, high-quality movie and a slightly unrealistic, pop-culture entertaining movie. Goodfellas vrs Scarface, perhaps. Take your pick.[/b]

You sort of condtradict your point here.  The problem is that these are both quality movies.  The fact that they are of varied levels of "realism" shows that quality is not exlcusive to realism, but quite able to be produced on many different levels.

How would you compare Toy Story, The Godfather, Star Wars and Citizen Kane?  They have varied levels of realism, yet they are all quality movies.  The same can be said of games.  Within any certain genre, quality can be found.  We already have invisibility and fireballs, so I think quibbling over whether that slash wound on your leg managed to sever the quadricep resulting in a 30% movement decrease, 3 day rest timer and someone with the "muscle repair" skill is somewhat overkill and cumbersome.

Which is why I prefer the players to have a good deal of creative freedom over a scene rather than letting the code dictate it for them.  I agree there must be boundaries, but I prefer them loose rather than tight -- and that has nothing to do with whether the game is a Hack and Slash or not.

-LoD

[Kalden]

You sort of condtradict your point here. The problem is that these are both quality movies. The fact that they are of varied levels of "realism" shows that quality is not exlcusive to realism, but quite able to be produced on many different levels.

I agree. I shouldn't say that realistic RP is necessarily the "highest-quality RP". It's simply the most realistic RP. People get pissed when you defy realism and call you a twink, so I figure there's an implicit assumption on these boards that realism is better.

But you're right. Realistic RP is not necessarily better RP. I like being able to play characters that can hide in a second, or run amazing distances, or take cripping hits and keep on fighting just as well. It's fun. It doesn't make sense, but we can pretend it does.

I couldn't come up with better examples of a boring realistic movie and an entertaining, sorta-realistic movie. Star Wars is a good example of an entertaining, unrealistic world. We can have realism and entertainment...both Goodfellas and Scarface are fairly realistic and entertaining. If we were to push for strict realism, most of us would be playing slaves, farmers, or random commoners scraping by.

Forgive the rambling nature of this post. *headscratch*

One common complaint is that you have to work around the unrealistic code sometimes(actually often). You have to make excuses for why your character does this or doesn't do that, and that can interfere with your RP.