[stevenrasnick]

Jsonedecker, on Mar 3 2007, 09:39 PM, said:

We are thinking of a few approaches to this topic, but honestly don't want to talk about it too much here as this is a public forum afterall.

We are most certainly watching ourselves though.

You never know who is lurking.

It's cool John, I know a lot of things will be withheld from us until the timing is right for everyone involved...

I kinda just wanted to get the community's opinion on the matter.

[Lightspeed]

Quote

I would like to see where casualties have an impact on the campaign - say if you lose a particular skill like a demo guy, in a future mission maybe someone else could do the job but slower. And you have a fixed pool of characters, so if you go through the missions losing people, you might wind up alone in the last mission - or maybe can't even finish.

I like this dynamic mission concept.

As far as heatlh goes I think the OGR style was spot on in terms of how it affected a player......but i'm all for the addition of a Medic as long as its as realistic as possible. If it's going to be cheesy...forget it. If I see those paddles Ima scream......

[MONOLITH]

Lightspeed, on Mar 4 2007, 07:03 AM, said:

I like this dynamic mission concept.

I think I'm leaning this way myself. Remember OGR, where the character stats build up with each successful mission?

It's just enough to add a bit of an RPG element, so that it actually becomes important to not lose a guy, as opposed to games where you start with a team and it just doesn't matter what happens to them.

I prefer to feel the need to protect my men. It adds a whole new element and feeling to the game. If I develop a world class sniper half way through the campaign, then I know I have to make en extra effort to plan properly to protect him.

The extreme opposite is Gears of War. I could care less if my AI buddy goes down, he'll magically get up again as soon as I clear the area.

[zeroalpha]

MONOLITH, on Mar 4 2007, 08:27 AM, said:

Lightspeed, on Mar 4 2007, 07:03 AM, said:

I like this dynamic mission concept.

I think I'm leaning this way myself. Remember OGR, where the character stats buld up with each successful mission?

It's just enough to add a bit of an RPG element, so that it actually becomes important to not lose a guy, as opposed to games where you start with a team and it just doesn't matter what happens to them.

I prefer to feel the need to protect my men. It adds a whole new element and feeling to the game. If I develop a world class sniper half way through the campaign, then I know I have to make en extra effort to plan properly to protect him.

The extreme opposite is Gears of War. I could care less if my AI buddy goes down, he'll magically get up again as soon as I clear the area.

totaly agree on this one, i hated to lose a team member in OGR and even more so in R6 as the personel bios where there and you felt tht you knew your team members

[Jsonedecker]

MONOLITH, on Mar 4 2007, 08:27 AM, said:

Lightspeed, on Mar 4 2007, 07:03 AM, said:

I like this dynamic mission concept.

I think I'm leaning this way myself. Remember OGR, where the character stats buld up with each successful mission?

It's just enough to add a bit of an RPG element, so that it actually becomes important to not lose a guy, as opposed to games where you start with a team and it just doesn't matter what happens to them.

I prefer to feel the need to protect my men. It adds a whole new element and feeling to the game. If I develop a world class sniper half way through the campaign, then I know I have to make en extra effort to plan properly to protect him.

The extreme opposite is Gears of War. I could care less if my AI buddy goes down, he'll magically get up again as soon as I clear the area.

We agree to.

[FWF.Osteo]

Being the devil's advocate (as I'm not sure what I'd like to see):
Remember we are not really in the game so we won't feel the wounds so... A HUD-less system wouldn't be NORG. If you have an injured ankle, every movement would remind you it was injured. Just beginning to get up to move, you would hurt, and this would give you incentive not to get up and move around. Some small visual to show you just how badly you were hurt could 'replace' your innate ability to feel pain, lack of mobility, what ever. Ravenshield did have a full, 1/2, dead indicator but this showed that the next shot would put you down. Too simplistic I think but I'm really not sure what would be better. AA does a good job of bleeding vs not bleeding and the green/yellow/red and doesn't let you know that the next shot will take you out... FWIW...

[MONOLITH]

Just bouncing around an idea,

Games typically have 'increasing physical limitations' to indicate injury, ie: limping. slowed movement, less aim accuracy. That's fine.

But as for a 'health indicator', I think it would be cool to have something similar to a disorientating visual fade out; meaning, something similar to what you see in other games when you get flashbanged. As your character grows closer to death, the vision could blurr slightly, the edges of the screen could blacken, your peripheral vision could tunnel in a bit, your hearing could become a bit muffled.

Not enough that you could not continue to play, but just enough so that it becomes a natural and intuitive indicator of "wow, my health is really going down".

Having your ability to see and hear properly slowly worsen, would be a much more NORG type 'indicator', than looking down at an icon on a HUD of a highlighted bodypart.

[Freshmixture]

Well the health system should deal with a few things:

1. Running or not.

2. Injured or not.

Regardless, either of these things should effect targeting and movement. You shouldn't have a severe degredation of targeting or movement though, that would be extremely frustrating and boring to anyone yeah?

My $.02,

Fresh

MONOLITH, on Mar 4 2007, 09:52 AM, said:

Just bouncing around an idea,

Games typically have 'increasing physical limitations' to indicate injury, ie: limping. slowed movement, less aim accuracy. That's fine.

But as for a 'health indicator', I think it would be cool to have something similar to a disorientating visual fade out; meaning, something similar to what you see in other games when you get flashbanged. As your character grows closer to death, the vision could blurr slightly, the edges of the screen could blacken, your peripheral vision could tunnel in a bit, yourhearing could become a bit muffled.

Not enough that you could not continue to play, but just enough sothat it becomes an intuitive indicator of "wow, my health is really going down".

Having your ability to see and hear properly slowly worsen, would be a much more NORG type 'indicator', than looking down at an icon on a HUD of a highlighted bodypart.

Very good points here. Definately NOT a "an icon on a HUD of a highlighted bodypart" though......

GO

Fresh

[krise madsen]

FWF.Osteo, on Mar 4 2007, 03:39 PM, said:

Being the devil's advocate (as I'm not sure what I'd like to see):
Remember we are not really in the game so we won't feel the wounds so... A HUD-less system wouldn't be NORG. If you have an injured ankle, every movement would remind you it was injured. Just beginning to get up to move, you would hurt, and this would give you incentive not to get up and move around. Some small visual to show you just how badly you were hurt could 'replace' your innate ability to feel pain, lack of mobility, what ever. Ravenshield did have a full, 1/2, dead indicator but this showed that the next shot would put you down. Too simplistic I think but I'm really not sure what would be better. AA does a good job of bleeding vs not bleeding and the green/yellow/red and doesn't let you know that the next shot will take you out... FWIW...

Good points there, and the rest of y'all too. This is turning into a great thread

From a realism perspective, I'd say the trick is to replace the indicators you get in real life when you're wounded: It hurts, there's blod e.c.t. I mean, even if you don't have a HUD message telling you you're wounded, you can feel something ain't right, even if pain doesn't set in immediately, and if you look at your leg and see the pants torn and blood everywhere, you'll know something ain't right. I'd say that a system that provides you with the same info is what's needed, even if it isn't "realistic" per se.

As for being wounded, I'm stumped. I'd like to see something NORG in terms of how much "combat capability" you have left when wounded, depending on the severity of your injuries of course.

And obviously, the ability to provide first aid shouldn't be limited to a single character (after all, this isn't BF2 ), though "advanced combat medicine" may be restricted to teammembers with the proper MOS, though I have now idea how to implement that.

An important issue was raised earlier: Similarities and differences between SP, coop and MP. I really don't have a problem with tweaks and changes to facilitate better MP play, play balance e.c.t.. What I dont want is those tweaks to mess up my SP and coop play. Though I do belive that's an issue for a different thread.

Respectfully

krise madsen

[FWF.Osteo]

MONOLITH, on Mar 4 2007, 10:52 AM, said:

Having your ability to see and hear properly slowly worsen, would be a much more NORG type 'indicator', than looking down at an icon on a HUD of a highlighted bodypart.

Exactaly what I meant as we are not truly wounded so would need the "feeling" to be replaced with visual implementation... Some heavy alpha and beta testing would probably show what worked vs what was just 'eye candy'.

Back to AA; the bleeding indicator is a pretty good idea in my opinion as if you know you were bleeding you can go prone and be still and the bleeding stops more quickly. As we can't feel or really see our bleeding rate in game, the flashing drop of blood did give a visual on this (faster, more blood, faster health loss, ect). Again, while not truly NORG, we have to replace what we feel with what we see or hear...

Edited by FWF.Osteo, 04 March 2007 - 09:58 AM.

[MONOLITH]

FWF.Osteo, on Mar 4 2007, 10:57 AM, said:

the flashing drop of blood did give a visual on this (faster, more blood, faster health loss, ect).

Just to take this even further, the same thing could be incorporated into the non HUD concept. Sort of like Gears of War has that bleeding icon that appears center of screen, and fills more with blood as you take wounds. But instead of the centered icon, the same blackening edges of the screen could be tinted red, etc.

However, thinking about it, anything that represents 'near death' as we described above, would most likely include blood loss anyway; so what I'm trying to say is, any near death visuals, and bleeding, are pretty much one and the same.

[Psychomorph]

Few visual injury indicators:
- Increased screen bobbing as harder breathing.
- Hearable breath, sounding less healthy.
- Screen sways from time to time to sides a bit, indicates body shacking, tremble (whatever is the right word for this).
- Heavy injuries cause pain when moving, you hear the soldier to do a silent pain outcry, croak.

[Tactical Jerky]

MONOLITH, on Mar 4 2007, 03:52 PM, said:

But as for a 'health indicator', I think it would be cool to have something similar to a disorientating visual fade out; meaning, something similar to what you see in other games when you get flashbanged. As your character grows closer to death, the vision could blurr slightly, the edges of the screen could blacken, your peripheral vision could tunnel in a bit, your hearing could become a bit muffled.

That's basically what they did in the BF2 mod "Project Reality".

[RAbbi]

I like the way America's Army made you seek treatment once wounded, lest ye bleed out. THAT was good. As you continued to bleed, your condition worsened. What sucked about it was the lack of a REAL effect on your ability to play in the meantime and thereafter.

OGR had THAT down to a science. Depending on where you were hit, different abilities were adversely affected. I took a head wound in OGR MP ADV once. It was interesting.

ALSO, I'm no friend of the health-o-meter, whether by color or bar scale or number. It was the one thing that always disappointed me in DooM SP. I could have lost 99% of my health and still be running and jumping and kicking massive amounts of butt until something hit me again or I walked over the magical medpack.

So what's it like to really take a bullet? Don't ask me, man. I only work here.

But best guesses will work, and I'm fairly certain it would SUCK. As would shrapnel.

Here's what I DID like about BF2- when something explosive went off too close to you (even outgoing artillery or tank rounds), it literally rang your bell. Vision blurred momentarily, ears rang. If you were TOO close to the source of this explosion, you could literally be blinded and deafened for a couple seconds. Won't knock you on your fourth point of contact, as I've seen artillery rounds do to dummies before, but I guess that's life...

SO, take the AA bleeding system, apply the OGR damage effects, and don't forget to sprinkle the BF2 eyes/ears effects. Bake at 375 degrees for 40 minutes, basting occasionally.

And VOILA! Last point, if I've been shot or blown up or stabbed or whatever, I KNOW where it hurts. It'll be very PAINFULLY clerra to me where I've been injured, unless I've taken a spinal or head injury of the non-battlefield-friendly kind. The kind where I'm completely ineffective from now on until I get to Walter Reed. So yeah, having a quick access or even HUD option for seeing where I've been hurt in addition to the effects I realize would be nice. After all, the HUD is only a visual representation of the soldier's situational awareness, and can't be considered an effort at realism...

No chucking health packs from a full sprint to instantly heal teamies, please. And ho magical 25% or 10% gains, much less FULL HEALTH REGEN, for simply running dead sprint over a medical object. It takes time to even apply a bandage. Like in AA.

Dang, that game was good. At least for Medics...

[stevenrasnick]

Good post rabbi. I like your recipe... I'll second it.

[meade95]

I dislike the notion of "adding skill" points per each mission.

These guys (this unit) are suppose to be the best of the best. We all understand that experince matters....but the noiton of adding skill points after each mission just comes off as not-elite to me....

Differing team guys should have differing skill sets....YES.....but adding skill points to each guy after a mission I don't like.

Make them all top notch guys at what they do.... We are talking a select unit here.

[krise madsen]

meade95, on Mar 8 2007, 09:53 PM, said:

I dislike the notion of "adding skill" points per each mission.

These guys (this unit) are suppose to be the best of the best. We all understand that experince matters....but the noiton of adding skill points after each mission just comes off as not-elite to me....

Differing team guys should have differing skill sets....YES.....but adding skill points to each guy after a mission I don't like.

Make them all top notch guys at what they do.... We are talking a select unit here.

Agreed.

Otherwise, we might as well add a +1 armour bonus when we cast the "Iron Clad" spell. Unless the other guy has an enchanted AK-47 of course...

Looks like we're finally getting a game that doesn't treat us like idiots. We're getting training missions to teach us how to fight, as opposed to dropping us straight into action in a game so dumbed-down even the most braindead idiot can figure out how to play. And still, some idiots just don't.... oh well. Nice touch anyway.

Respectfully

krise madsen

[FA sear]

There are a lot of good points in regard to the health system here.

As far as the "RPG" elements go, I personally liked them. They were a simple and somewhat crude representation of what soldiers gain from real exposure to combat. I know a retired SOF guy from Vietnam, and something he said to me really struck a cord. He basically said that he would take any ordinary grunt that has heavily participated in two tours rather than any special forces, seal, etc... that has not seen anything more than training. That was many years ago, but I still remember what he said.

RPG elements "made" you to save the lives of your team, as you want the best of the best out there in the next mission. My friend has an uncle that also served in Vietnam, and there is a reason he always says "ain't nothin like actually being out there. I can tell you all the stories and describe to you in the best detail everything that happened, but in the end, ain't nothin like actually being out there. You just can't understand until you have actually lived it."

Maybe there is a better system than what GR had, but in the end I would like to see some sort of "RPG" element in the game.

[krise madsen]

jchung, on Mar 8 2007, 10:55 PM, said:

There are a lot of good points in regard to the health system here.

As far as the "RPG" elements go, I personally liked them. They were a simple and somewhat crude representation of what soldiers gain from real exposure to combat. I know a retired SOF guy from Vietnam, and something he said to me really struck a cord. He basically said that he would take any ordinary grunt that has heavily participated in two tours rather than any special forces, seal, etc... that has not seen anything more than training. That was many years ago, but I still remember what he said.

RPG elements "made" you to save the lives of your team, as you want the best of the best out there in the next mission. My friend has an uncle that also served in Vietnam, and there is a reason he always says "ain't nothin like actually being out there. I can tell you all the stories and describe to you in the best detail everything that happened, but in the end, ain't nothin like actually being out there. You just can't understand until you have actually lived it."

Maybe there is a better system than what GR had, but in the end I would like to see some sort of "RPG" element in the game.

In principle, I don't mind an incentive to keep the team alive, but I don't need skills improvements, as I didn't need them in R6.

You are of course right that having "seen the elephant" counts, a lot. It's no coincidence that troops with combat experience have been considered particularly valuable though time. But I'm still quite wary about this being represented by "lengthening the skill bars".

Health? Erm, well, ahem, err, hmm, got a bit carried away (as usual ). NORG would dicatate that you:

1) Don't get shot.
2) Are severely hampered even by non-lethal injuries.
3) Put great emphasis on first aid and casevac.'
4) Never leave anyone behind.
5) May very well have to scrub the mission if your team suffer injuries early on.

2) and 5) make for interesting gameplay elements but would also be exceptionally frustrating. 3) and 4) offer some interesting prospects but may be somewhat difficult to implement, gameplay-wise.

Respectfully

krise madsen

[FA sear]

I don't disagree with you, that is why I said this.

Quote

They were a simple and somewhat crude representation of what soldiers gain from real exposure to combat.

And this...

Quote

Maybe there is a better system than what GR had, but in the end I would like to see some sort of "RPG" element in the game.

I too am curious as to how and what BFS will put in for this.