[Poll] What Do You Think About TI's Wounds System

[Kinaed]

Greetings,

Staff recently put caps on the amount of damage any given limb can take to reduce hospital times, but Azarial informed me that even though this was done, it wouldn't work.

Several times in OOC Chats, it has come up as a peripheral topic that being wounded is very onerous on the wounded party - and in tells this week, I had a player suggest that if wounds received were so great that they'd keep someone out of RP for a week, why not just consider it a death (or roll a death roll) for the character. Wow.

Anyway, the wounds system was created by a physician, and I'm not sure how well that balanced the interests of general players against giving the physicians' guild more to RP about.

What do you guys think? What is good and bad about our wounds system? What needs to change? Vote, and comment!

[Rosin]

I'm not sure on which to vote so I will reply instead. In my opinion, the wounds could even be more severe when untreated (seek those medics!) but a lot less severe when treated. Maybe even add action to tend to a wound, where a skilled physician can speed the healing process further, but with a limit of use, like once every day or few days. Maybe it should also come with RP XP requirements so that it will be an actual scene, not just come, chat for a minute about weather and you are tended. Heck, maybe just roleplaying around physicians could do that? This way room-wide tending!

[SilverMoon]

So I chose the wound system is good at getting people to rp their wounds accurately and minor tweaking one. I don't really know what tweaks would be good, but well... I chose it just because people seem to be having problems with it.
In general though, I think it's good. I understand like how it can be rather boring and as it says onerous to rp a wound, but then that is also a source of rp. maybe not the best, but it is a definite source. I would hate, to illuminate that. Especially as someone who plays a physician character, I make a great effort to be at the hospital, whenever I see someone on where. It becomes my first priority because I am aware that it can be boring to be stuck in a room with no one to rp with. however, as long as someone is around, to rp with, it adds a sense of realism and I like that.
However, that's just my opinion.

[Voxumo]

I voted for it's good to get people to rp their wounds, and that it's generally okay but needs minor tweaking, as well as it being a hassle in extreme situations. I think having to deal with wounds for a few injuries is perfectly fine, but when most combat is on the extreme side, it does get hasslesome. I mean look at the whole madison incident. There were what 5+ people all injured at the same time, with extreme wounds, who were held up for a week, maybe two? Alot of those held up were important people, who were essentially stuck in the madison with limited rp.

And I know someone will say "You don't have to be in the madison for the wounds to heal." and you are correct, but if the system is about realism, and you got hit for wounds that will take a week to heal, those wounds must be pretty darn significant, so does it really make sense for your character to be out and about with those wounds?

I'm all for a bit realism, but we also need to remember this is a game, and sometimes realism has to be lessened in order to keep the fun aspect of a game.

[Taunya]

I've got a few complaints/suggestions about wounds.

1. I may be wrong about this (never had a chance to test it), but when you take any like damage to a wounded body part, it seems to completely reset all healing it's had. So say you have a (numbers made up) 140hp wound, reduced to 120hp after treatment, after a few days it's down to 15hp. You get a small graze for 20 hp, and suddenly you're injured back to 160hp, having lost several days of healing. It really should be based on current hp rather than original hp of the wound when re-opened, or just have it count as a new wound entirely, leaving the original wound untouched.

2. It can be rather off-putting to play a character that's been severely disfigured in highly visible places, so something to reduce the urge or make it harder to hit people in the face repeatedly might be a plus. There could be pros/cons for targeting different body parts for example; head, hands, and feet could be hard to hit but easier to crit when hit, and inversely body, arms, legs easy to hit but harder to crit. I think it's a instinctive reflex to shield your head when struck at, so if missing the head, perhaps it could give a good chance to hit the arms instead or something like that.

3. I think the wound system is especially rough on casual players that only log into a character for a quick scene or two every once in a while and may not stay RP active. Perhaps wounds could automatically clear after 2-3 weeks whether active or not. 2 IC months seems enough time even for broken bones and such to have healed.

[Lei]

3. I think the wound system is especially rough on casual players that only log into a character for a quick scene or two every once in a while and may not stay RP active. Perhaps wounds could automatically clear after 2-3 weeks whether active or not. 2 IC months seems enough time even for broken bones and such to have healed.

This is biggest thing for me. Even if I'm offline for a few months, I would like to assume that my character took care of their own basic health needs while I wasn't there to puppet them.

[Andruid]

I have a begrudging relationship with the wounds system, as well as the disease system, particularly now that I'm a more casual player on account of working full time. I generally find both systems to be tedious, especially the disease system -- you can be logged in and idling (keeping the wholist populated) but while you're doing that, your disease is evidently progressing outside of RP. So, I was barely a week into the game, and I already had a stage-two disease with less than 6 hours of RP under my belt. In other words, I barely had time to orient myself to my new character, and I was already having to deal with coded aspects of the game that were time-sensitive and demanding of my limited availability. Some people might find that a fun and exciting reason to go looking for RP with physicians (very few of which are currently active), but to me, it just felt like I was getting slapped with some random, unexplained penalty that had nothing to do with my RP thus far.

I would go out of my way to give my character a coded disease under plausible circumstances, but having them forced on me in what FEELS like a random manner doesn't really get me excited about Physician RP. It just makes me resent it.

As for wounds, I think treated wounds stick around probably longer than is necessary or fun to play. Wounds are apparently evaluated at nightly rollover, which feels incredibly arbitrary and makes it more confusing to track how long you have left before they're supposed to disappear, because it's not based on when you actually got the wound or when you had the wound treated. Again, this is another situation in which I would gladly go out of my way (and have, thanks to inflict) to injure my character under plausible circumstances and to seek out Physician RP, but if I felt pressured to hang around the hospital for an OOC week, I'd probably start to feel frustrated and resentful. I'm not against non-consensual coded penalties, but I agree that if the goal is realistic AND fun RP, then there has to be some balance.

Things like coded combat should have real consequences and lasting effects, but allowing players more leeway to casually shape their characters' stories might make things more enjoyable and less frustrating, especially for people with limited playtime.

[Haley Rose]

When an alt of mine was severely injured, they were injured for an entire ooc month. Wounds definitely need some balancing, though I am generally in favor of the realism. Just not quite so much of it.

On the npc side of things, I think, when hunting game, range should be taken into effect by those using ranged weapons like throwing daggers or bows. If you're shooting at a deer, it's probably not close enough to run up to you, kick you in the head and run away. It is quite limiting to take one good kick and be in danger of being hospitalized if you try to hunt more especially when your weapon would not support that.

If quicker healing times were implemented as well as, as Taunya suggested, having same wounds in same area not grossly affect said area and hp, it might be very much more fun to play. Bruises should not last ic weeks, especially if they have been treated which, realistically, makes a bruise seem a few days old anyway. Broken bones, yes, that should take longer, but bruises, especially treated ones as well as shallow cuts unless you aggrevate it, should not stick around for ic weeks. That, is not realistic. No bruise stays that long.

[Kinaed]

Any more comments to add or suggestions for what will fix parts of the system before I take this to staff for discussion?

Thanks!

[Andruid]

Thinking about Lei's comments, I'd generally like to see wounds heal regardless of whether a person is logged in and active for some minimum amount per day. Wounds should just heal, period, at a minimum rate -- which could be ENHANCED by being logged in, active, having them treated, whatever. No one should have to log in after a busy week RL and have to deal with wounds they acquired an IC month ago, as though no time had passed at all.

Ultimately, I think this would make the system more flexible and friendly for casual players or people with limited schedules. I don't think pressuring players to log in and be active in order to make their wounds go away is really the right message to send folks, or really sets a reasonable expectation, especially if the pbase is short on physicians. It just seems discouraging, to me, and likely does more harm than good in terms of encouraging people to play.