Why debuff someone instead of attacking them?

Lots of reasons

1) Your medic should not be as good fighting an enemy as a warrior type character so it would be his way of evening the fight up.

2) When grouped debuffing your enemy makes killing them easier for your warriors and also mean less damage taken by them.

3) An example of a debuff used when yoru not trying to kill someone could be someway to slow or root an enemy if things go wrong and you have to try to run for it. (e.g. painkiller in the leg numbs them so the person cant walk properly)

4) If one of the debuffs is like I said some sort of tranquilser it gives the the player or party some aspect of crowd control if things get out of hand. It could be somethign as exotic as a fast action spray or injection to somethign as simple as a cloth covered in chloroform.

5) They can be used to lower enemy resistances to certain types of damage.

There is no reason this type of thing isn't appropriate for a post apocolyptic setting I think it just depends on the way it's implemented.

A way to implement them could be as some sort of fast acting/short lifespan virus,you could also link debuffs with damage over time effects.

By using a virus as well you could introduce some sort of diminishing return effect where if you use the same debuff again within a time limit then it isnt as effective because the bodies immune system knows how to fight it.

In game
The Medic makes a specialised type of attack and either fails or succeeds in injecting the virus into the enemy. The attack could be on some sort of timer based on how long it takes to prepare another syringe?

Malal

Sometimes you run into an opponent that you can not take on by yourself (particularly if you are a medic with limited attack training). By allowing medics to use disabling attacks (slow, poison, etc) they can bring their oponent closer to their level.

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?

Looks good, regarding the drugs I would be against having an addiction level because it could be abused. Player A annoys Player B who is a medic player B shoots him full of highly addictive drugs and gets him addicted.

Also what happens if a player becomes addicted and there is no supply? He isn't a medic so he can't get it. Unless your planning on having some sort of NPC drug dealers?

I have an idea how you could make it work though, lets not call it addiction but blood purity at anyone time you can have say 100 units of any drug in your system. Depending on the drug administered the units go up by a specific value depending on the duration the drug lasts and type of effect it has.

This adds some gameplay mechanics what drugs do I apply to this character for this situation to get the best results???

When the drug wears off say 90% of the value gets returned to the pool the final 10% decreases over time to show that the final residues are being absorbed by the body. Again this adds a gameplay element as you have to keep track of what you have injected him with and stops you just pumping players full of drugs all the time.

Now if you go over the 100 you could go into some sort of OD mode where for 30 secs you go a bit mental and increase attack speed/damage but after that for 30 mins no more drugs can be administered because the body would just shut down. Or instead of the OD mode you instantly lose any beneficial effects and again cannot have anymore drugs applied for 15 mins?

Application methods for drugs stim patches, tablets, injections, liquids.

Example Drugs(sorry for the cheesy names)

Quicksilver : Increases attack speed
Tuff : Increases defence
Hulk : Increases strength
Focus: Increases intelligence
Flame: Increases resistance to heat
Rad: Increases resistance to radiation

You could also do something kind of similar to the viruses(debuffs) to stop people just applying hundreds of viruses to enemy chracters.

Viruses have the ability to destroy each other so you have to be careful what you apply to an enemy.

On top of that after a virus has been applied there is an immunity period after the effects have worn off where the body knows how to fight it, or like I said in the previous post instead of immunity you could have a diminishing return effect where the virus doesn't last as long or doesnt affect the enemy quite as powerfully cause his/her/it's body knows how to fight the virus.

Example Your medic infects creature with the Wither virus (decreases strength by 20 lasts 30 secs) after the virus wears off you reinfect the creature with Wither but this time it only decreases the strength by 15 and only lasts 22secs. If however there virus isn't reapplied for 1 min then it goes back to working at full effect.

Hope this gives you some more ideas.

Malal

Well Im sure the game will get a Mature rating anyway so using the term "drug addiction" is fine. The "purity" scale is a good idea though.

We are definitely keeping addiction in the game. Thats part of the gameplay.
You learn to craft a drug...you let it increase int and str but then it takes away stamina. You sell it to an enemy..get them hooked...then take it away and boom! They show up to a fight thinking they have increased str and int, but they are out of breath :)

The idea of getting used to a drug is an interesting one that would have to be balanced with other gameplay, but it worth exploring.

Id still like to have some kind of virtual surgery mini-game if possible.
Something fun, short, but challenging. Like one of those "Pipes" mini-games where you have to connect the pipes in the right order to get to the next level...just imagine they were arteries and blood vessels :)

Why would an enemy buy drugs from you though especially if there is a chance you are messing him up? Why not get them from someone who is a friend?

Will characters not be able to see they're stats? If they can wouldn't they already know that they're stamina is lower than normal?

The idea for a mini game is kind of cool, but you would probably need to make 5 or 6 different types to keep it fun, otherwise once you get used to doing them it will become a real drag having to do it everytime you perform surgery.

Another mini game idea Spot the difference, here is a healthy stomach and here is a stomach that has been sliced open by a sword find 5 diffrences before his blood (timer) runs out. or along the same score a picture of a gun wound and you have to spot the 5 pieces of shrapnel in the picture before he bleeds to death. :)

Malal

Quote:

Original post by Malal Why would an enemy buy drugs from you though especially if there is a chance you are messing him up? Why not get them from someone who is a friend? Will characters not be able to see they're stats? If they can wouldn't they already know that they're stamina is lower than normal? The idea for a mini game is kind of cool, but you would probably need to make 5 or 6 different types to keep it fun, otherwise once you get used to doing them it will become a real drag having to do it everytime you perform surgery. Another mini game idea Spot the difference, here is a healthy stomach and here is a stomach that has been sliced open by a sword find 5 diffrences before his blood (timer) runs out. or along the same score a picture of a gun wound and you have to spot the 5 pieces of shrapnel in the picture before he bleeds to death. :) Malal

Ahhh...but therein lies the FUN! You could use an alt character to make friends with an enemy and sell him drugs...drugs that he passes on to his friends...and so forth and so on..

Or you might get them from a respected crafter...and not know...

Or you may decide that the pros of using it outweight the cons...just like real drugs...I mean if you just need to up your STR once in awhile...whats it going to hurt, right? muahahaha

As far as seeing what drugs will do...Im thinking that you will either:
a) have to be told what they do from the person you get them from
b) see only the good stats and not the bad ones
c) see random info on good and bad stats

In the medical skills there will be identification skills for viruses and drugs...so the medic can analyze a drug and let you know what the stats are.

As far as the mini-games...you're right they have to be varied to be fun.
I like the idea of "which one of these is not like the other" (sesame street reference)...in fact, it might even be a decent teaching tool if you wanted to go that far.

It the risk of sounding immoddest, this is sounding challenging and fun!
Gonna need someone to come up with mini-games now :)

Can't remember what they are called but do you remeber those old plastic toys you used to get where you slide squares of a picture around until they complete the actual picture.

You could also have a game where there are 2 picture 1 is the main complete picture the other is a small area of the main picture, you have to find the are that matches in the main pic.

Malal

There are a few surgery games that have been made you could have a look at. There's Life And Death (1988), and Life And Death 2: The Brain (1990).

An idea i also had was to use a mini-game mechanics like those in Reaktor as a representation of you pulling bullets out of someone.

Ok...that mini-game is bad ass. See this is the type of stuff that should go in an MMO! I mean we have nuclear reactors in the game you know...;)

I think you've just given me an idea for a thread.