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Decline Lack of immersion, because of HP mechanic

Lagi

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:whatho:Retarded or not, judge by yourself;). Hold firm its gonna be an essay;
The core of RPG are simulation of worlds similar to ours. The main difference is emphasis on combat, instead of mating. Sure, there are obvious differences (plants, creatures, tools, magic), but root of every rpg universe is same; player impersonate a humanoid, who are solving affairs on his own, with violence.

Every games has some rules to solve problems, and in every RPG you will have one: "how to render my opponent incapable of taking hostile action against me?", short "how to kill'im?".
RPG come with story to justify players slaughter. Game Designers always base physics in plot scripts on realistic assumptions, about human bio-mechanic and body damage handling.
  • last words from dying NPC,
  • seriously wounded NPC, unable to help PC,
  • presence of maimed NPC,
  • description of tactics, involving bleeding, tiring opponents
  • appearance of NPC with wound-connected items/tools; bandage, eye-patch, prosthesis
  • battlefields with dying soldiers,
  • hospitals with ill patient.
Regrettably plots writings and outcome of game rules, give contrary impressions. This contradictions prevent player from taking immersion and cause jokes.
  • "WTF dude, stop bitching. Me and my mates (who are from your world, have family here, were growing up in this cottage), were reduced even to 1HP. I'm dying like twice a day",
  • "No worry I give you red potion and you will be healthy as new born. Jezz, why don’t you even take it by yourself! They are under every rocks here",
  • "Find ingredients for cure? This is lots of work! Can you just die and I will resurrect you? Just add half of the scroll cost to reward"
  • "Why bother? I already catch this illness multiple times in dungeons. I can cure this peasants with my Cure Disease spell.",
  • "Water chip? I spend years in dessert without drop of water.".
=================

The main problem is lack of proper wound conditions. Commonly you just have two state: alive, fully functioning (even with last 1HP) or dead (not functioning at all, hell even the game is over). And to change between this two, you have to scrape off layer of HP. The bigger the HP layer, the more abstract the combat become. From stressful, fight for survive change into repetitive labor.

OK, but the HP could represent combat experience in avoiding damage, that grow with levels.
Fine, experienced soldier are experienced, because they know how to stay alive, that’s why they are bloated with HP. Excuse is good. Still its abstract. From game design perspective its linear, no-brainer save from all kind of harassment. Bad approach. A lot better would be gained resistances to specific factors.
  • You are boxer, so you are resistant to punches.
  • You are soldier, you know which material will be penetrate by bullets, and not to cover behind.
  • You are junkie, so you are resistant to poisons.
More factors open various approaches.

Writing about realism; exposition to hazardous environment, lots of damage to go through, quarrelsome style of live - all this “experience” rather should render one's less healthy, than more with levels.

===================

If we put it ad absurdum; assume there is no HP, each hit is dead. Game start to be more realistic(!). Miss will also mean that the attack don't do enough harm (only light wounds) to kill character. The D&D armor class explanation start to make sens. Intermediate state between life and dead (wounded), we treat as such a rare event, that never occur for a group of 6 person, but few examples might be encounter in battlefield or in plundered village.

===================

HP system also come with specific tactics, very clear in RTS games like Warcraft 3. All against one; since units has 2 states, you want to kill foes one by one.

Since shoot-outs and sword fights usually end with insta-kills, imagine clash of two groups of hooligans, punching, kicking and grappling each other (less lethal, more close to RPG vision of combat). Would it make sens for one group to encircle single opponent and focus to beat him unconscious? No, because they will expose self for focused, powerful attacks.

In RPG's thous attacks are treat as highly specialized "Sneak attacks", that only skilled assassins can perform, if they hide before. The point is, if there is someone in opponents team not engaged in combat, he can choose someone who is and strike him down with single move. To prevent it, you always want every foe be bonded into fight. [in rpg terms you want to detect your enemy thiefs]

Having unexpected strike is the key attribute to win a fight (its not so essential, if foe just lose 15% HP).

=============

Simplest solution is to insert thresholds (50% HP wounded, -10 to hit; 10%HP unconscious).

But lets try more sophisticated system. Insert wound condition to describe character state, which would work as Poison or Disease status.

First divide wounds from HP (yet not completely resign from HP's). Let wounds be condition (like poison, disease), not pool of points.
  1. not wounded – effect of hit are too minor to significantly hamper victim performance. Act normal.
  2. Wounded – victim is impaired, but can still act.
  3. Maimed – victim can no longer participate in combat, but its not dead. With this state should be introduced losing limbs, bleeding to death, agony. Character is treated as dead, just after time he return to play, like in Pillars of Eternity only with some serious afflictions.
  4. Dead – kill on spot.
Wound's and Maim's could be divided into few levels of seriousness, especially if computer calculate and remember everything for player.

Guys get struck with mace, check if damage is high enough to wound him (or maim or kill). If so he's penalized (have harder time with attacks and/or defense). Each wound separately make victim more mutilated, more prone to higher damage, eventually next hit will eliminate character from combat. Devs can limit number of wounds; crossing limit end with one level more serious condition.

=============

Death spiral complain
If I get wounded, I have less chances to win a combat. I just get more and more penalized

Yes, that is the point. You're passive chance to win decrease. Same as with all (de)buffs effect that are present in every RPG (they also decrease your chances to win a combat). You become more aware of your useable skills, items, party members and environment you can use into your advantage.

If one's activity is limited solely into hit checking (no use of skill, team members, items, environment, escaping), then dumbass deserve his fate.

==========

Healing

Wounds have sens, if they effect wear off with reasonably long time. If you can heal 2 level of wounds with instant spell during combat, they existence is not noticeable.

Why games don’t use, god dammit, wound dressing to improve Health?!:argh: Because HP are abstract, games need as abstract potions to regenerate it? Putting bandage, cloth or squeeze (First Aid) should be the first thing you would like to do with your low health, not drinking red beverage.

Painkillers (drugs, stim-packs, alcohol) should remove the penalty from received wounds for some amount of time. Pre-buffing with aspirins to reduce pain during combat and save turn for attack? Sounds sweet.

===========

Turn HP into stamina.

Pool of points are handy to represent wearing character of many factors like poison, hunger, fatigue, work, skill use (spells), running, performing attacks. When you dropped to 0, you just can not longer perform certain action (think about Mana). If you are forced to go below 0, then you are unconscious. HP/stamina should be easily replenishable by consuming food products or resting (sleep, wash or entertainments).

Probably similar topic emerge in past, however I feel interior need to vomit share my retarded reflections about crpg mechanic. At first I also want to elaborate about why I hate spells (that should be skills with items), why I hate increasing power (all this +128 dmg bullshit) of items (riddle of steels! no-body hear about it?!), why I hate extermination of poor foes like goblins, animals and why I hate overpowered guards in towns – and why it's breaking immersion. But since I'm newfag and this post is already too long, let it be about HP only.
 

hivemind

Guest
When it comes to RPGs I usually get "immersed" by the writing and the fact that HPs are an abstract and "unrealistic" mechanic rarely hinders my experience.
 

Jools

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When it comes to RPGs I usually get "immersed" by the writing and the fact that HPs are an abstract and "unrealistic" mechanic rarely hinders my experience.

As much as I hate the HP mechanic, and most other similar mechanics (AC? Criticals? Stamina? AP? Mana? lol @ all, and all were discussed in some dedicated thread, at some point), because they're all fairly unrealistic to me, I'm a storyfag so I pretty much have 0 fucks to give about the systems.

OP has some points, but it's all a tad too "theoretic" and "ideal". In any case, as stated in that other "writing VS c&c" thread, poor writing can ruin my immersion way more than any other element.
 

rezaf

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Many many years back, we had this discussion in an P&P RPG group I attended.
We used AD&D back in the day, and compared to many other rulesets it's pretty highly abstracted.
So we tweaked and tuned the systems for months, only to finally realize combat had become an unmanageable chore in the end.

When all is said and done, a lot of it comes down to personal preferences. If you can live with highly abstracted models, a purely (or mostely, like AD&D) HP based progression model is nice.
Otherwise, there are actually quite a few alternate models to chose from, especially in P&P, but there were also some computer games over the years that went beyond a minimalistic HP-centered model.

A nice example that's valid in both areas is the german "Das Schwarze Auge" / "The Dark Eye" ruleset. It has HP, but models some aspects of combat much more in-depth than - for example - AD&D did. You have seperate rolls for attack and defense (and weapons and armor modify both), you have wounds and crippling, you have endurance ... you get the point.
To see a steamlined version of this in action, have a look at the Drakensang games.

Implementing a "full" model like the one you suggested in a CRPG is a big NoNo.
A dungeon master in a P&P RPG can compensate for little details like that the main PC maimed his right hand, but CRPGs work on a model that basically has to assume everyone is at full fighting strength. It's difficult enough to balance fights to be reasonably challenging for a mage and a warrior (or a party with many mages vs. one with many warriors), but what if our main hero got crippled in his leg in the very first battle vs. some rats down in the tavern basement and is unable to run for the rest of the game?
And, frankly, I don't think I'd like to play such RPG.

I forgot which it was, but there was at least one that modeled such stuff, and you'd frequently end up with a party where everyone had lost a limb or two and with ridiculous things like a warrior without arms. Stuff that you'd expect to see in Dwarf Fortress.
Damn, if I only could remember the name. I'm pretty sure it was not a roguelike...
 

Melan

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This is an argument people were already having in 1977, and an argument they will still be having in 2050. There are good reasons why some games use abstract Hp-like systems, and some (which tend to be more niche, more specialised) go into more complexity (Deus Ex had a fairly good system, super-fast medikit healing notwithstanding). They serve different purposes.
 

Animal

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I never played it, but I have the impression that Neo Scavenger is closer to what you want.

The problem with a complex, life like system, in my opinion, is that it will suck the fun out of combat. Instead of a traditional, fun, action oriented and tactical gameplay, you will have a more adventure like experience, where every combat situation is likely to be "game over".
 

vonAchdorf

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In Darklands you had a dual Endurance / Strength system where damage was shared between both depending on your armor and the enemy's weapon. Running out of Endurance would knock you out, running out of Strength meant the character was dead. Endurance regenerated much faster than Strength, being severely wounded could lead to week(s) of resting if you didn't have the necessary skills or potions. Fighting when wounded became increasingly dangerous because you'd risk to run out of Strength (die) before being knocked out.
 

gestalt11

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I used to plau Lostsouls MUD. They had a full limb/hp system. You died if you took too many hp to the head or chest. If you head hit 0 you died, if chest went to -1 you started bleeding out and would die at some high negative number and lose some hp per "hearbeat". All the various other limbs worked similar to the chest (hands arm feet legs) if they got to 0 they were "disabled" and wouldn't work if they went even lower they got amputated and you had to find a healer store and pay a good bit of money to regenerate your lost limbs. One problem with the system was if you got an arm amputated you would take off your entire suit of armor which was a little stupid, but being unable to wield weapons with a disabled/amputated hand made sense. You would even drop a wield weapon on the ground if your hand was disabled or amputated.

It might sound overly complex to some people, but it actually worked fairly well I think it was maybe better than pure HP. Although the way some spell targetted straight for the chest and other might randomly target a limb was problematic.
 

Animal

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I used to plau Lostsouls MUD. They had (...)

Well, when you put it that way, I guess it could be fun. Certainly sounds interesting.

On a side note, I miss the MUD and NWN online rpg experience...
 

gestalt11

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Well, when you put it that way, I guess it could be fun. Certainly sounds interesting.

On a side note, I miss the MUD and NWN online rpg experience...

I played a ranger I eventually made to Legendary Hero status on that game and the ranger guild (not exactly a class but sort of) had a modest heal they could do by applying basically an herb poultice. I got hit in the chest real hard and was bleeding out and in MUDs its very important to know when and how to run since the Death Penalty in a MUD makes Everquest look like Candyland. I started running to lose the guy and was at like -15 chest and was like oh fuck. I put a poultice on my chest and got to like -2 and ran some moreh aving bought a little time. I eventually ran through various jungles and forest bandaging my chest over and over until I could get away and to a healer. I think I bandaged myself like 5 times. Keep in mind in that game if you attack guys in a town the whole place could go hostile making escape tricky. If I had crippled a foot too I probably would have died as a crippled foot makes you take more time to move.
 

Animal

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I only remember playing a MUD with a vampires vs werewolves theme and at some point, some guy chopped my head off and carried it inside a bag for quite a some time. Fun times.

Can't force myself to play one nowadays though.

Also, how can no game replicate those hardcore experiences today? I'm sure there would be a market for that...
 

Neanderthal

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My own homebrew system is quite combat light, as it is deadly and can quickly go wrong, so is only turned to as a last resort. I replaced HP with a number of wounded states (minor, medium, major and mortal,) how many of which a character possessed was dependant on the Body stat. I also made a stamina pool that was influenced by Willpower and would result in unconsciousness if depleted, and also didn't increase these automatically through levelling, unless a feat was chosen. Armour served to soak and reduce damage, various weapons were more and less effective at bypassing armour, while sneak attacks and other more deadly forms of assault could bypass armour and automatically add to wounded states.

It has so far worked quite well, and if a giant armoured behemoth of a character is caught unawares with a knife at his uncovered throat, then he is as mortal as anyone else and cannot ignore that. Similarly it is a legitimate tactic to target an enemies stamina and render them unconscious, when they become easy prey. Fleshed out with feats, enchantments and preparation there is more nuance to the system, but this is quite a simple workable core for me and my group.
 

gestalt11

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I only remember playing a MUD with a vampires vs werewolves theme and at some point, some guy chopped my head off and carried it inside a bag for quite a some time. Fun times.

Can't force myself to play one nowadays though.

Also, how can no game replicate those hardcore experiences today? I'm sure there would be a market for that...

Honestly I found the DP in MUDs kind of dumb. I am not really into losing 1/3 of your total expierence. I died as at level 65 in Lostsouls once and lost 9 levels and had to do a corpse run. 9 levels was just pointless pain that undermined the point of the game really.

At the same I think people who think EQ was "hardcore" are rather amusing, in a pat a child on the head sort of way.

The mechanics themselves and not wanting to die are cool enough. The people who need self-flagellation themed DP meh I don't think it does what they think it does.
 

DeepOcean

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There is nothing wrong with abstraction, games don't need to be realistic, their mechanics need to be satisfying and it is totally possible to make a realistic game with totally fucked up mechanics but I would agree that developers are a bit too unwilling to innovate and try some different damage models just for the fun of trying something new.
 
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Ludo Lense

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Realistic combat:

You fight some bandits in the forest, you get a deep cut wound rendering your arm useless for at least 2 months. Half your party is dead. The rest die due to infection and bad sanitation. Throughout most societies in human history (excluding organized military operations), actually fighting someone was a last resort scenario since one sword nick could screw you up for life.
 
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Excidium II

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Realistic combat:

You fight some bandits in the forest, you get a deep cut wound rendering your arm useless for at least 2 months. Half your party is dead. The rest die due to infection and bad sanitation. Throughout most societies in human history (excluding organized military operations), actually fighting someone was a last resort scenario since one sword nick could screw you up for life.
Sounds fine to me
 

undecaf

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HPs are an abstract

Indeed they are. I'd say calling them inherently "unrealistic" is kind of just "reading it wrong" (for the lack of a better term).

I've always thought that while they are indeed a representation of the characters physical resilience, they are also representing the characters experience at taking/evading harm relative to who's delivering the damage. That's of course more difficult (perhaps even impossible; depending how one looks at it) to take from a game that clearly shows that your shot/swing lands on the opponents forehead or eye instead of nicking the ear or grazing the shoulder which can be interpreted from an overall more abstract depiction (like ISO perspective).

I tend to like my RPG's more abstract because the more one can interpret the situation by himself, the more it can make sense. Up close and personal "RPG's" do often suffer from the lack of abstraction in my book and more often than not lead to these odd situations where you sink 30+ bullets in someone's face. It doesn't bother me if the game is otherwise good, I can deal with it and shrug it off, but it is something that's regularly noticed.
 
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Excidium II

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I've always thought that while they are indeed a representation of the characters physical resilience, they are also representing the characters experience at taking/evading harm relative to who's delivering the damage.
Sounds like it's abstracting more than it should
 

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