Note that, although this thread was inspired by dark hunter's thread on survival mechanics, I decided that it became lengthy enough that it required its own thread. Feel free to comment, rate, etc.
TL;DR Tiered sickness would be a really neat survival mechanic that would also serve to break up absurd groups of 30+, although it requires a lot more survival groundwork to be laid down first and is likely really far off.
I really love the disease idea, surprisingly. Not only would it add a neat survival element, but it would also serve an incredibly important function: breaking up gigantic groups. Now, I love groups of 2-8 people. That is fine, and an important part of rust. But clans of 30+ people all living together in absurdly tall armored sky scrapers? That is not in keeping with the gritty, bash-a-man's-head-with-a-rusted-pipe aesthetic of rust. While the dumb sky scrapers can be dealt with by improving the building mechanics and making stability more of an issue, such large groups of people should never be able to live in such close proximity. Why would such groups not form, in real life? Disease! A gigantic issue in primitive societies. To make the mechanic both interesting and useful, you could implement it in the following way:
You could effectively have a disease threshold. The higher it is, the more likely you are to get a disease.
It would be increased by factors such as: current health, wetness, coldness, time since consumption of raw or spoiled meat, time since consumption of human meat, time since last bleed, severity of recently bleeding, hunger, thirst, and most importantly proximity to diseased players, dead animals, and dead players.
Every 60 or so seconds, the game pulls a random number. If this meets a threshold value, determined by the disease threshold, then the player acquires the first stage of a disease 5 to 10 minutes (for a smidgen of realism, and to make the digital system feel more natural). A normal, healthy newman who doesn't engage in any unhealthy activities might be likely to get a disease every 12-24 hours of real time. We don't want this to become "disease survival sim 2015." Eating human meat, however, might double your likelihood of getting a disease. Letting 25% bleeding run its course without using a bandage could easily quadruple you likelihood of getting a disease for the next hour or so. You get the idea.
For the sake of simplicity, there only needs to be one kind of disease, with three stages. A similar mechanic will elevate you from one stage to the next. If you would normally acquire a disease because of a poor random roll and a high disease quotient, you would instead increase the stage of your disease.
Stage One: Slight health cap decrease. Melee damage is slightly decreased. Minimal coughs, every so often, alert attentive players to your sickness. You can transmit the disease to people in your proximity.
Stage Two: More significant health cap decrease. More significant melee damage decrease. Slight decrease to speed. Water consumption rate is greatly increased. A potential chance to throw up food, like you would in legacy if you ate raw meat. Different, more frequent hacking coughs accompanied by screen shake let surrounding players know that you are very contagious, and standing by you is a considerably greater risk than standing by a stage one victim. Your coughing fits are also loud and frequent enough to potentially give you away if you are trying to be sneaky.
Stage Three: This stage is even worse, and without considerable help from a teammate you will have great difficulty surviving. Health begins to decrease by ~5 a minute, and health cap drops only a little bit behind it, rendering medical syringes of limited use. You can no longer sprint, and melee damage is reduced greatly. Along with screen shake from awful-sounding coughing fits, your cursor wavers a lot on its own from the shaking associated with your physical weakness, so you are of little use in a fire fight. Quick water consumption and throwing up are still there. You are very contagious, making it a large risk to even be around you long enough to help you survive.
You may be thinking "that is so incredibly bad that it would diminish the fun of the game." Let me explain myself. Firstly, you ought to understand how disease can be dealt with. First and foremost, players have a fixed threshold for beating disease. This means that at every interval when a random number is pulled and the player's condition could worsen, another similar value will be pulled. If the player's condition doesn't worsen, and the second random number meets the fixed wellness threshold, then the players condition improves by one unit. By default, a player would be around three times more likely to meet the wellness threshold than the disease threshold. This means that, for a player who is not doing anything to unhealthy, acquiring stage 1 of the illness will not be a huge deal. If they just take it easy, don't wander around in freezing rain, don't get into serious fights, and don't go near anyone else with the disease they are very likely to be fine.
There also has to be something that a player can do to help with the sickness apart from just not stressing themselves out when they have to the disease. Firstly, bandaging your wounds would be key to minimizing the effects of combat on your health. Secondly, antibiotics. Now, these have to be handled carefully. Now, they should totally be a thing. You should not be completely at the mercy of disease with no recourse. However, their existence risks undermining the whole point of disease: breaking up groups. This is precisely how we do NOT want to do it: "Taking an antibiotic lowers the level of your disease by one." This would make large groups of powerful players almost totally immune to disease. "Oh, did you get stage one after getting shot in the chest? Just take an antibiotic from the large chest full of them." Rather, an antibiotic should help you fight a disease. I suggest that it double your wellness threshold. In other words, you are twice as likely to get better at any given 60 second interval. This will not, however, make up for poor behavior. If you are in a confined space with other infected individuals, or if you continue to sustain untreated injuries, or if you continue to expose yourself to poor weather, then antibiotics are not going to be able to stop your decline into disease.
Obviously, a lot of other things need to be in the game to make disease worthwhile like better weather, thirst, and better mobs. Ultimately, however, this seems like an elegant and interesting way to solve the problem of clans of dozens of people living and working in a confined space. This phenomenon is destructive to both the gameplay and the aesthetic of rust. It means that a group of less than 10 is totally without an ability to respond to raids by larger groups, even if they are geared up and skilled. Rust shouldn't be a game of Agar.io, where larger clans effortlessly absorb smaller groups or solo players. It should be a gritty game in which anybody with a modicum of equipment or some good salvage can stick it to the big man if they are just a little bit more clever, just a little bit more patient, and just a little handier with a spear. Thanks for reading.
Maybe even add biological warfare, such as biobombs, bionades, corpse poisoning, etc.Definitely a feature I'd see in the future, not to mention groups getting devastated when in close proximity!
Good write up, I'd be up for that. A very elegant way to break up bigger groups too, I love that twist. It would be pretty easy to make a mod that covers most of this... taking notes :)
[QUOTE='Deicide[RS];47936621']Good write up, I'd be up for that. A very elegant way to break up bigger groups too, I love that twist. It would be pretty easy to make a mod that covers most of this... taking notes :)[/QUOTE]
Call it AIDS - Amateur Indie Disease System ;p
There is currently a gaping hole in your suggestion: suicide.
Why even care about disease if you can just kill in console and respawn at your sleeping bag. Until that is addressed any system like this would be useless.
[QUOTE=ExarchOfHats;47936560]Every 60 or so seconds, the game pulls a random number. If this meets a threshold value, determined by the disease threshold, then the player acquires the first stage of a disease[/QUOTE]
These kind of systems is completely unnecessary. There is no reason to make disease a RNG poll function.
A better solution may be as areas are used by people, they get dirty. Pockets of germs form and if you go though a pocket with a lowered immune system, you become sick, or have some percentage chance of getting sick.
Larger groups will see their areas become dirtier faster and will need to clean more frequently.
Communicable disease could work similarly. Wherever a sick person is, a pocket of germs form.
Also your whole idea is predicated on the assumption that people wouldn't live in groups of 30 without getting sick. By is is quite silly really. Bryce population would have to be much higher before disease would become a problem. I like the idea of disease being a threat but it should come from some other source not simply living in a group. Never the most primitive man could work out the "don't sleep in poop " factor
Good thread, but Garry and his team would need to make changes to the suicide/respawn tactics that player already currently utilize. If a threshold or even randomizer is used to determine disease chances, then players are just going to kill themselves every time they come back home, to reset any chance of catching anything too serious.
Overall, everything you said has merit, and I would really enjoy seeing what disease would do to help create emergent game-play.
An idea that comes to mind, is that players can transport dead animals/humans into controlled territory. If the bodies are not dealt with, they will attract wild animals, and disease will begin spreading to the point where people will need to evacuate, or become carriers.
Only way to prevent serious biological warfare such as this, would be to find the corpse-piles early on and set them on fire.
The overall idea is sound - I like it!
while i like the idea of it being contagious, it seems unnecessarily complicated, and could probably be reduced to "diseased status: DOT to hunger and thirst bars, intermittent cough animation" and still have about the same effect.
as mentioned above, the problem with persistant states is that to counter it is more effective to simply kill yourself.
wasn't there talk of removing/punishing the suicide ability?
[QUOTE=hadri;47939411]wasn't there talk of removing/punishing the suicide ability?[/QUOTE]
It is on the mindmap.
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