Disease and herbal medicine

[daveboy2000 16]

Well, I found it rather unrealistic that standing outside in a taiga for hours had no penalties, same for a jungle, thats why I am posting this!

Well, everyone (hopefully) knows that extreme cold and humidity makes you more vurnable to diseases, so does extrem drought, or being wet. Why not get sick from these conditions?

One could become sick from the following factors actually:

Certain biomes: Jungles because their humidity and insects, taiga's and thundra's because of their extreme cold, swamps because of the huge amounts of bog (bacteria love bog).

Ofcourse you may also get infections from being attacked by certain mobs (zombies are rotting flesh, bacteria love that stuff)

Random infections may also occur, withoud any obvious reason, just like in real life

These diseases can cause a wide varitity of effects, from bobbing screen to losing health, to being slown down or extreme hunger/thirst, or a combination of some.

Also there must be a way to counter these diseases, herbal medicine!

Herbal medicine ain't rocketscience, so anyone should be able to understand it. You take certain leaves and herbs, you mix them, make powder from them, make tea from it, whatever. And consume/drink/smear it on your face and bam, you slowely become better... In a nutshell.

[Antice 2]

No, no and NOOOO.

While diseases may very well add to the realism, nobody wants to be forced into spending several minecraft days searching around for a particular plant or beastie or whatever that is needed to cure you when they are in the middle of some building or Smithing project. since you re-spawn on death, the by far easiest solution would be taken. namely jumping of a cliff and waking up in bed healthy as ever.

It just wont add any valuable gameplay is what i'm getting at. it just encourages cheesing.

[daveboy2000 16]

well, solutions could be made to that, like that all items are lost upon death, and thus cannot be recovered.

Also, ever heard of farming plants, like we farm trees?

[Antice 2]

well, solutions could be made to that, like that all items are lost upon death, and thus cannot be recovered.

Also, ever heard of farming plants, like we farm trees?

ever heard of storage chests? the obvious solution on all difficulties except hardcore would be to cheese a death. period. it's often enough done due to hunger already.

adding a lot of extra plants that you need to find, then keep stocked at all times in case the random generator figures to throw a disease your way is just tedium. especially if finding said plants is also at the behest of the random generator. it's hard enough to find a spot with the needed starter metals to get going with entering the metal age.

either diseases are easy to cure by just everyday plants that grow practically everywhere, making the entire mechanic just superfluous and annoying, or it's going to require special plants that only grow in certain places, in witch case it introduces a sometimes impossible element to the game that most players will just cheese away by death.

[Michidez 9]

In real life you find the solution usually verry close to the source

[Jivix 21]

Ok, I like the idea of being affected by the environment/weather. But you have to understand, a healthy person doesn't just "get sick" from being out in the cold, or being in a jungle. Sure, each environment has it's own afflictions (Frostbite/snow blindness in taiga, wildlife/poisonous animals/poisonous plants in jungle), but the most common way to get sick out in the wild is to drink water. So perhaps instead of getting sick just from being on your merry way, how about needing to drink water, sort of like on Hardcore in Fallout? If you drink bad water, or unpurified water, you can get sick (rivers would be safer than lakes, and oceans would dehydrate you further after a short time). Once you're sick, you either have to sleep it off, wait it out, or if you're lucky, use an herbal medicine to speed up the recovery (it wouldn't instantly cure it). You could boil a pail of water to purify it, or have a solar still outside to provide you with clean water.

[RogueHydra 32]

I actually like what Jivix said there. Especially with a massive agriculture system coming down the road. Growing herbs to help heal and cure sicknesses sounds excellent (and could give MP players a role of apothecary, herbalist, or healer of some kind).

[Antice 2]

I actually like what Jivix said there. Especially with a massive agriculture system coming down the road. Growing herbs to help heal and cure sicknesses sounds excellent (and could give MP players a role of apothecary, herbalist, or healer of some kind).

It would also make it practically impossible to thrive in single player without being annoyed by a game mechanic that is quite frankly punishing the player for no good reason at all. especially if the diseases are not lethal. just changing your capability for doing work. If the diseases are annoying enough then players in general will cheeze a death with the help of a bed instead of bothering with searching around for some kind of herb or other superfluous item that serve no other purpose than to be a cure for said disease. if the disease is not severe enough to bother with, then the player will happily just ignore it and carry on as if it didn't exist.

I get that some people want more realism. but some parts of reality are no fun at all. diseases being one of them. realism just for realism's sake is a waste of developer time imho.

[DanNetwalker 8]

I could bare something like "too many bites from spiders or zombies make you sick, and you will need some antidote".

BUT ONLY (and that's a big only) if you would get inmunized for some time after that, the infection heals itself after some time -instead of being forced to look for an antidote-, it's just a small nuisance instead of a common game over condition, AND it's toggleable in the difficulty configuration.

[RogueHydra 32]

I could bare something like "too many bites from spiders or zombies make you sick, and you will need some antidote".

BUT ONLY (and that's a big only) if you would get inmunized for some time after that, the infection heals itself after some time -instead of being forced to look for an antidote-, it's just a small nuisance instead of a common game over condition, AND it's toggleable in the difficulty configuration.

That's pretty much what I was going for or at least what I envisioned going on during the game.

But anyway (this is not directed at Dan btw, was just quoting him because that's what I was thinking).

I mean, even playing games like NWN, diseases and poisons aren't so bad that they make the game not fun. And I never said anything about a plant having only 1 use as to heal a disease or something. More like the way your body needs vitamin C. You eat an orange for sustinance, it also boosts your immune system. I highly dislike the idea of things only having 1 soul purpose, it makes things boring. As I've said before, there's a nice balancing act between realism and fun, it's always there, it's just finding that's challenging. And when you do have it, it makes the game fun.