Diseases, sicknesses.

[LeoIvanov]

So, this topic has inspired me about some game idea that might radically change the game difficulty for people who are craving for more challenge, as well as finally giving some incentive for people to pick doctors. 

 

So, the idea is to add all sorts of sicknesses that all have different symptoms. Some sicknesses will make you anxious, depressed, some will make you cough and sneeze and lose health randomly without any visible wounds on your body, some will make you feel weak, some will just hurt you and, if left untreated, will start killing you off.

 

The health panel, in this suggestion, gets a new column for every "Sickness" that your character gets. Depending on how severe it is, it gets it's own color. (Ideally, the "Sickness" tab will be green when your character feels alright)

 

Doctors and people who have leveled up their doctor skill will be able to distinguish the types of sicknesses (and even the correct items to treat them!). Inexperienced people will just get an "unknown sickness" and will have to either look for a doctor, or try and fight it on their own to continue going.

 

The list of sicknesses may range from Common, Safe, uncommon, to unsafe, hazardous and lethal. Each range may have up to 4-5 sicknesses with different symptoms, including the ability to make other people sick by being near them, or spreading it through various other ways like eating the same food (Remember the times when you make something and share it with your friends in Zomboid?)

 

You could catch sickness from variety of different factors, including but not limited to: Being out in the rain, walking around in a room full of blood, failing to clean and/or burn zombies, drinking contaminated water, eating raw food, eating sick animals (birds/rabbits/fish).

 

Traits like Prone to Illness and Outdoorsman determine the severity of possible sicknesses you may catch, as well as their variety. Doctors are capable of determining the sickness and possible ways of treating it (The bigger the level, the more "easier" solutions, like herbalist stuff), Hikers and Foragers will be able to find the medical plants to treat these.

 

I believe that introducing this to the game will add a new potential way to kill your character that everyone will have to be afraid of. No longer will you be able to live safely behind huge walls on the corner of the map, fishing from the same pond and sleeping in a room full of corpses. You'll have to stay careful about your surroundings and actively make sure that you don't catch a nasty virus that will end your life. Suddenly, trips to the town and into pharmacies become useful. Easier gamemodes and sandbox can include or fully remove the range of these sicknesses (meaning characters never get lethal sicknesses, or never get that particular annoying one), in case people find them way too hard.

 

Then, the modders could gather together and come up with their own sicknesses. Expand it, make it beyond realistic. (Looking at you, Hydrocraft <3)

 

I wish I was good at photoshop and image editing to draw something good for a GUI presentation... Hopefully I explained it well enough for people to understand my thoughts.

[FabulousShawn]

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Edited July 3, 2020 by FabulousShawn

[Johnny Fisher]

Perhaps some mental afflictions, too... I'd like to go a little psycho.

[LeoIvanov]

Perhaps some mental afflictions, too... I'd like to go a little psycho.

 

Believe it or not, in earlier versions of the game (back when the map was 1 cell, and we had alien zombies) there was some sort of psychosis system that created "ghost" zombies who never did any damage to you or your surroundings, but still produced thump sounds and gave you a "scared" moodle if you ran into them.

 

However, the idea of the sicknesses does not solely rely on scripting an entire new function or creating new moodles, it can hold well enough on affecting already existing moodles and health panel.