A Medical Thread — Some Thoughts

[KoishiVibe]

so let's get our giggle out of the way first.

Grazes. being that the human body can fix small injuries, a graze doesn't necessarily have to be tended to. while for sanitary reasons, obviously you really should, in the moment, a graze from a bullet usually won't be an issue you need to fix immediately, and sometimes at all.

onto more serious things.

in the heat of combat, some people will simply not acknowledge they've been shot. adrenaline, stress response, etc.

[*] from what i know from testimonies (limited, mind you), adrenaline is a double edged sword; you might be able to push through an injury, but you might also discover your injuries when you come down... and when you've bled quite severely.
[*] this also leads to improved reaction speed and physical capability in the moment, but it comes at expense of precision and may lead to effects like fumbling reloads, shaking scope picture, fumbled weapon handlings.
[*] after the immediate action can come the... well, comedown. fatigue from overworking your body, decreased reaction speed from mental fatigue, and others.

potential implementations:
as always, these are fairly modular bits and concepts; i'm not terribly good at coherency so... y'know.

[] ingame, we may have some options. a hidden adrenaline variable, possibly.
events like bullets coming closeby, firing the weapon, killing someone in close distances, or hearing gunfire would raise this. it would of course, naturally come down over time in some conditions.

[] generally, you'll start to notice slight tunnel vision, maybe heavier breathing, or faster breathing, and a speeding of the heart rate. you might notice you feel faster, some actions like mantling an obstacle or throwing a grenade are more forceful, or quicker to do. but also, potentially, your reloading might fumble sometimes, it bangs against the magwell and you need another half second to shove it home.
maybe you miss the charging handle on your first, even second grab if it gets bad enough.

[] an alternative might be heart rate being tracked, which might also tie into bleeding. interestingly enough, it appears that under stress, you may actually bleed out slower as the body concentrates blood to your core and such. of course this also means chest wounds will bleed faster...

[] generally, you'll want cooling off periods. take a break, sit down, breathe. Smoke, talk with a buddy, drink or eat, anything really. maybe just an option to sit down somewhere, or take a moment to rest.

another thing:

incapacitation
eventually, losses happen. your armor fails, the insurgent gets lucky, or maybe it's just one wound too many.
im gonna divide these into two.
soft incap and hard incap. soft incap is something that with work, you can get back up from. painkillers and dressings cover a multitude of sins for the moment, though you may be quite vulnerable to going down again from any source of damage, and combat performance is probably going to be reduced.
hard incap is a mini-objective.
id like to say that this game becomes a lot of mini objectives really
clean out this MG position, guys are coming down on us, we've got low ammo all around, we need another way up this building, etc.

anyways. hard incap implies you're kinda FUBAR. you need medical attention in short order, which means dragging you back out to the vehicle, etc. think multiple chest wounds, blood loss, or something else that would render combat ineffective, even after first aid.

i think to go further we'd need to know more about the internals of the medical system.
i could suggest an pain system with multiple checkpoints, ie at pain level X, gain the following effects, but that may well be in the game already.
i mean, for all we know, the current footage available of gameplay may have signs of all the things ive mentioned, but it's not visible in the final cut.

[AmperCamper]

Thanks for your thoughts on this!

We needed a clever way to incorporate adrenaline, and the "body check" is one of the ways we're integrating this. Surely, there are ways to expand upon this in the future, but feedback has been positive (at least so far). We're open to hearing more.

Bandaging does come at a cost, but not exactly like the ones you described. After bandaging, player actions become more limited: they cannot run at full sprint, climb ivy, or vault through windows or over obstacles.

We aren't incorporating reload failures or jams, but it's something we've noted from the community.

Please keep chatter on this coming, as it's extremely valuable for us.

[Manasweeto]

I like those ideas from the OP

[Kean_1]

Personally, I like the blood sweep mechanic in the game currently. I think it is a clever aspect to bring a little depth and immersion to the injury system without getting overcomplicated, burdensome and/or frustrating

Not everyone is going to react the same to an adrenaline rush. Some may actually be more focused while others get tunnel vision, etc. It's just like how most people react in life or death / emergency situations where they will usually fight, flight or freeze.

I have to say that I'm not typically a big fan of random event mechanics like a fumbled reload, weapon jams, etc. It's really a matter of how far do you go in a game to simulate such things.

It's really a balancing act between just enough and too much. ....engaging and exciting vs. unappealing and tedious. A lot has to so with how creatively developers integrate such things into their game too.

[rodrigoxm49]

so let's get our giggle out of the way first. (...)
i mean, for all we know, the current footage available of gameplay may have signs of all the things ive mentioned, but it's not visible in the final cut.

These are actually very good ideas. It would be amazing if devs could implement some of these in the game. I'm fine with how things works now (just need to fix some glitches), but these are really good ideas.