Mental Health Discussion Thread

[Fryhizzle]

Unless there are npc psychiatrists in game, it would probably be best to keep it vague.  It would make sense to just have the moodle say mental strain, or even have the description reflect the persons mental state instead of having a specific disorder indicated.  You can have symptoms of schizophrenia without knowing you are schizophrenic. Often 'crazy' people don't realize they are 'crazy', they just suffer the symptoms of 'craziness'.

 

Of course this would only matter if it was implemented.  I do support the idea of losing your mind in a zombie apocalypse, but the less you know about the condition, the more realistic it will seem. "Stay away from Bob, he has been... 'strange' lately."

[Ontogenesis]

 

Snip!

Snip!

 

I did actually write omething fr depression and sensitivites, here: http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/6990-depression-schemas-and-emotion-moodles/

Igenerally argue against 'cheating', if they did add schizophrenia it would be interesting to see them add hallucinatons, missing items to create paranoia etc. to make the player paranoid too, not just the character.

Spectrum approach would be better as you suggest - then the line is blurred and the gameplay would be more interesting (and more realistic too).

[Rathlord]

Here's my take on a "broad strokes" insanity system. It's open enough that the player could be suffering from a number of things from PTSD to schizophrenia to depression fairly believably. Symptoms could be slightly randomized on a per-character basis, possibly to represent different people being more susceptible to different psychoses.

 

This is from my big super-suggestion thread.

 

Sanity

 

Introduces a sanity moodle to the game. There is no positive version of the sanity moodle, just a negative:

 

Imbalanced: You are shaken by the current events and have been physically affected by them.

• You get a slight negative modifier to your interactions with NPC's
• You may occasionally hear small sounds that don't exist

Unstable: You have been severely affected by the apocalypse, and it shows.

• You have a negative modifier to interactions with NPC's
• You often hear sounds that don't exist
• You have trouble sleeping

Insane: Your mental health is fully compromised.

• You have a large negative modifier to interactions with NPC's
• You often hear sounds that don't exist
• You have trouble sleeping
• You occasionally see things that aren't there, including NPC's, loot, and zombies. These images are exactly like their real counterparts, but can have no effect on the player and disappear after a time.
• You talk to yourself sometimes, causing a small amount of sound
• You have a chance to be much more or much less susceptible to the panic moodle
• For short periods of time you won't see moodles that are affecting you

With the introduction of insanity comes two new traits in the beginning of the game:

 

Strong Willed: Much more likely to stay sane, and stops at "Unstable," not able to become completely insane.

Unstable: Much more susceptible to insanity

 

And finally, things that effect your sanity:

 

Antidepressants: Help stave off insanity, but become addicting

Alcohol: Can temporarily stave off insanity, but long term increases it if addicted

Corpses: Nearby corpses negatively influence sanity (implemented after cleaning up corpses)

Home: Staying in the same house more than once increases sanity

Cigarettes: Temporarily helps increase sanity

Losing a Companion: Losing a companion severely effects sanity

Becoming Injured: Being injured or sick decreases sanity

 

Nota Bene, the insanity effects are quite strong and should take a large amount of time to build up, particularly to the final stage. It should only become a problem if you neglect it or if you take the unstable trait.

[Krisu356]

I would suggest adding the amount of zeds killed in last time to the factors of losing mental well-being. Because seriously, how many people would not suffer any kind of mental unstability after doing some massive zombie killing? It at least should be temporary effect like getting a little depressed/sad (character thinking about people that zombies were or what could they be) and it could be countered by getting 'sociopath' perk or 'psychopath' that would be double-edged sword - you dont get debuffs for rampaging on zombies but you would be less friendly so the npc interactions would be harder. This should be temporary after all as survivors should get used to little less sane people they meet and rampaging on zombies should be something our character should get used to as well. This would prevent getting weapons from police station so early in the game as well.

[Fryhizzle]

Every time I read this topic, all I can think about is "Just look at the flowers".

[Elliohow]

Here's my take on a "broad strokes" insanity system. It's open enough that the player could be suffering from a number of things from PTSD to schizophrenia to depression fairly believably. Symptoms could be slightly randomized on a per-character basis, possibly to represent different people being more susceptible to different psychoses.

This is from my big super-suggestion thread.

Sanity

Introduces a sanity moodle to the game. There is no positive version of the sanity moodle, just a negative:

Imbalanced: You are shaken by the current events and have been physically affected by them.

• You get a slight negative modifier to your interactions with NPC's
• You may occasionally hear small sounds that don't exist

Unstable: You have been severely affected by the apocalypse, and it shows.

• You have a negative modifier to interactions with NPC's
• You often hear sounds that don't exist
• You have trouble sleeping

Insane: Your mental health is fully compromised.

• You have a large negative modifier to interactions with NPC's
• You often hear sounds that don't exist
• You have trouble sleeping
• You occasionally see things that aren't there, including NPC's, loot, and zombies. These images are exactly like their real counterparts, but can have no effect on the player and disappear after a time.
• You talk to yourself sometimes, causing a small amount of sound
• You have a chance to be much more or much less susceptible to the panic moodle
• For short periods of time you won't see moodles that are affecting you

With the introduction of insanity comes two new traits in the beginning of the game:

Strong Willed: Much more likely to stay sane, and stops at "Unstable," not able to become completely insane.

Unstable: Much more susceptible to insanity

And finally, things that effect your sanity:

Antidepressants: Help stave off insanity, but become addicting

Alcohol: Can temporarily stave off insanity, but long term increases it if addicted

Corpses: Nearby corpses negatively influence sanity (implemented after cleaning up corpses)

Home: Staying in the same house more than once increases sanity

Cigarettes: Temporarily helps increase sanity

Losing a Companion: Losing a companion severely effects sanity

Becoming Injured: Being injured or sick decreases sanity

Nota Bene, the insanity effects are quite strong and should take a large amount of time to build up, particularly to the final stage. It should only become a problem if you neglect it or if you take the unstable trait.

The problem with that seems to be you could be hearing noises in one band, but then when you progress to the next, that symptom is dropped and, say, negative interactions to npcs becomes a symptom. Which if this is the case, it seems like the possibility is there to swap from one disorder to another as you progress through the bands. Unless you mean that that wouldn't be the case and symptoms would progress in a logical and realistic fashion, if that's the case, why not just make a robust mental health system instead?

Read your post about depression onto, that's exactly what I was thinking in regards to disorders, never thought about the schemas idea you had though, thatd be a good thing to add in too. I was also thinking of adding in the trait system, traits such as a susceptibility to psychosis. This isn't an assured "you will develop psychosis" but, dependent on your experiences you will be more inclined to. Which symptoms would be added into the trait system though would depend on which symptoms have neurological indicators of susceptibility due to "natural" factors.

This is definitely a system that I think a LOT of research should go into, especially since if portrayed wrong it could havefend people. I'm happy to help on the research side of things if any help is needed.

[SpaceJunk]

It'd make sense if at first sanity changed very rapidly, but the changes were slower as time passes.

[Rathlord]

 

 

-snip-

The problem with that seems to be you could be hearing noises in one band, but then when you progress to the next, that symptom is dropped and, say, negative interactions to npcs becomes a symptom. Which if this is the case, it seems like the possibility is there to swap from one disorder to another as you progress through the bands. Unless you mean that that wouldn't be the case and symptoms would progress in a logical and realistic fashion, if that's the case, why not just make a robust mental health system instead?

Read your post about depression onto, that's exactly what I was thinking in regards to disorders, never thought about the schemas idea you had though, thatd be a good thing to add in too. I was also thinking of adding in the trait system, traits such as a susceptibility to psychosis. This isn't an assured "you will develop psychosis" but, dependent on your experiences you will be more inclined to. Which symptoms would be added into the trait system though would depend on which symptoms have neurological indicators of susceptibility due to "natural" factors.

This is definitely a system that I think a LOT of research should go into, especially since if portrayed wrong it could havefend people. I'm happy to help on the research side of things if any help is needed.

 

 

The original intent was for the symptoms to progress, rather than be dropped (probably should have made that clearer). The main reasons for a more generalized system, in my opinion, would be twofold:

 

First, that it would be much less work to implement. It would save a fair amount on dev time and probably not require writing a whole new GUI frame for it, etc.

 

Second is that outside of the clinic, which exact psychological disorder you have isn't really very important in my opinion. What I mean is, the important part (from a gameplay perspective) isn't the name of the disorder- it's the symptoms you see. Since really any of the disorders listed can present with any number of symptoms depending on the individual, while the psychologist may feel the need to know what exactly is wrong with a person, to the lay man, it's the symptoms that make a difference. Having the disease named in game adds very little to the gameplay in my opinion, and having characters present with the exact symptoms listed in the DSM seems less realistic to me.

[Elliohow]

Sorry Rathlord I should have been clearer, I also do not want the disorder named in game but rather have the symptoms present, as ontogenesis said, to just slap on "depression" as a moodle wouldn't be a fair representation of what depression actually is, especially without having other symptoms of depression other then 'being very sad' in game. However to put all the symptoms of depression in game as moodles would make the moodle sidebar cumbersome. So I call for a seperate tab on the health page specifically for mental health, which would certainly make sense if physical health has a tab.

Secondly, a generalised broad strokes approach to mental health seems like an insufficient way to approach this subject. I'd be completely fine with PZ only having a few mental health disorders that the devs deem to be most important but fully flesh out how those disorders are represented. For an idea of how to do that, see ontogenesis' depression and schemas thread. That is to say that a more complex system then a linear progression from 'sane' to 'insane' (which is not the case with mental health disorders) without actually explicitly stating what disorder a person may or may not have.

Tl;dr 1- a complex mental health system rather than a progression from sane to insane.

2- disorders not stated, only symptoms

[Rathlord]

Fair points, though I would stress that if it's a psychosis caused or exacerbated by something like witnessing the horrors of a zombie apocalypse, it's going to be a much more linear onset than you'd see in normal clinical cases. It'd be more like PTSD and less like just random onset of schizophrenia or depression, as there's an obvious causality which is clearly making the problem worse. That's just my point of view, though, and I can certainly see the benefits of doing it both ways.

[crowmium]

Some questions about the proposed system:

 

1) What gameplay mechanism would cause insanity to build?

2) Is there any way to become sane again? Or is there only staving off the inevitable?

3) Would there be a point of no return given the lack of modern psychiatric treatment? (i.e. mild depression or PTSD is self-treatable if certain environmental conditions are met, but severe schizophrenia is not?)

4) Could interaction with other humans, NPCs or PCs, affect this?

[TheLastCandleBurns]

I haven't read whole topic and don't know maybe my suggestion will be written below is already suggested by someone else, but anyway...

 

When the character stands totally insane (at the final stage of insanity) there is a chance that the player loses control under him/her for several seconds and he/she (the character, not the player ) starts to move chaotically and use the equipped weapon like a berserk. I mean the character for example takes his baseball bat, runs to the windows and breaks them to pieces or even crashes the head of his/her friend stands nearly

[MafiaPuppet]

Seeing imaginary enemies, items, etc seems like it could get really annoying if it happened every time you descended into that stage. It might be less obtuse if the final stage was divided into a dice roll of possible crippling depravities, so you don't get the same symptoms every game. If people had to deal with constant not-real mindfucks like finding cool items that disappear the next time they check or waking up to a horde of "fake" zombies in their room that they still waste a clip of ammo on, then they would probably find that a lot more fun if it was an especially challenging gimmick that only happened 1 in 6 times, rather than every fucking time their stress reached a certain threshold.

 

I mean besides that, I'll buy into that stress can break your mind and cause you to hear things that aren't there and otherwise suffer mental health problems, but it's harder to believe that it results in schizophrenia for every otherwise healthy person that suffers zombie stressors. The minor and moderate symptoms wouldn't have to change to add alternative major illnesses, since auditory hallucinations, social problems, and sleep problems are precursors to a ton of other illnesses.

 

 It's sort of fucked up to be making a game out of it, but I actually see a lot of mentally ill people in my work. Besides your schizophrenic option, you could add alternatives that wouldn't take significantly more novel coding once the work for the first one is already done.

 

Such as...

 

Depression

-Your tiredness moodle is entirely random, potentially leaving you wide awake in the middle of the night or forcing you to sleep multiple times consecutively before it finally dissappears

-You have a large penalty to NPC interactions

-You burst out crying or shouting angrily for no reason, causing a large amount of sound

-You do not benefit from any unhappiness-reducing items except medication

-You are resistant to panic

 

Anxiety Disorder
-Night terrors prevents you from sleeping at night regardless of how tired you are

-You are immediately at maximum panic in any panic-inducing situation

-You panic randomly as per the trait

-You do not suffer a penalty to NPC interactions, but instead are just randomly hostile based on snap first impressions (or as immediately as is appropriate for the NPC system)

 

Acute Stress Disorder (Desensitized)

-You no longer suffer panic from dangerous situations

-You no longer recover happiness or boredom from any items except medication

-You suffer huge diplomacy penalties to new acquaintances, but function normally with old acquaintances

 

Acute Stress Disorder (Overly sensitized)

-You often wake up before fully rested from nightmares, sometimes screaming and attracting zombies

-You suffer panic attacks, etc as per the trait

-You suffer from phantom zombies and paranoid sounds

-Your strange behavior incurs diplomatic penalties

 

Additionally, you could have the generic anxiety disorder and the acute stress disorders (also varieties of anxiety disorders) eventually evolve into PTSD with the mindfuck hallucinations and other paranoid symptoms if the illnesses aren't treated. In a vague sense, PTSD is just an anxiety disorder + ignoring the problem like a man + time.

 

On a lighter note...

 

I like boredom. It's not a problem at all if you're running around doing something (which most of us will be doing anyway). But if you've got nothing to do and you're having your character just sit around the house for hours on end while waiting for your crops to grow or something? Anyone will go out of their mind if they did that. Boredom is a natural consequence of having nothing to do, and you're not gonna have anything at all to do if you've got all the food and water you could possibly need and you're just sitting behind the fortress-like walls of your safe house twiddling your thumbs while you wait for time to pass by.

 

 

I hate the boredom mechanic specifically because it's unrealistic. If you actually study the psychology of boredom, it's an evolutionary positive. Being bored lowers your motivation threshold to take productive action. The more bored you are, the more likely you are to decide to do something productive with your time. The less bored you are, the more likely you are to spend your time doing nothing with your life. A free and healthy human being benefits immensely from boredom. Education, workplace productivity, and even child developmental milestones improve as boredom increases. Anyone on these forums can see that the contrapositive is also true: NOT being bored results in REDUCED education, productivity, and childhood development. How much more do you think you would have achieved if you didn't spend all your time playing videogames? Obviously, I'm being a little hyperbolic, so don't attack a strawman here.

 

In a zombie apocalypse, this reduced motivational threshold would be what gets people farming and studying and doing shit work they never would if an easier, more engaging option were available. It wouldn't drive them to depression and suicide. The negative aspects of boredom only manifest when you aren't able to spend your time productively regardless of circumstances. For example, someone in a non-first world prison goes fucking crazy because they're locked in a shitty room all day. On the other hand, people in first world prisons get so bored, they achieve ridiculous levels of education (or learn technical skills, or criminal skills) despite often lacking predispositions (beneficial personality traits, relevant intelligences) for it because we give them an outlet for their productive energy. It takes a certain kind of unhealthy individual to actually suffer from boredom when given an outlet to be productive, which you don't even find in the numbers most people would expect in prisons.

 

In a zombie apocalypse, you have a ton of outlets for this energy, even if most of them suck. And even you think all of what I just said was complete bullshit, there's still one reason why the current boredom mechanic is ridiculous. I might just be speaking for myself, but I don't need to find a book/magazine/journal to entertain myself. Even if you say that those things are just generalized stand-ins for all the thousands and thousands of random ways I could use items to entertain myself, the fact remains that even WITHOUT any items, I seriously doubt I could ever get bored. Not as long the game starts in the middle of July and I'm running around entirely naked and unarmed, my hands both automatically free to grip my dick and crank one out every time I find a secluded room.

 

TLDR: If you have time to read a book, you have time to masturbate. And you'll probably have more fun.

[Kajin]

I sincerely doubt the devs will ever add masturbation to the game. Also, I'd rather read a book than masturbate. A truly engaging book is more fulfilling on an emotional level to me. And I think the boredom mechanic as it works now is perfectly fine because your character only ever gets bored if you keep him sitting around doing nothing in the first place. Not once have I ever seen my character get bored while out on supply runs, fighting zombies, doing farm work or building walls or any of that shitty work that keeps him alive.

 

In fact, only time my character ever gets bored is when I've done everything I can possibly do to keep him in a well stocked well defended safe house and I'm hitting the fast forward button to pass the time til the next crop harvest.

[Dobbs]

I really like the idea of mental health being more fleshed out. As far as masturbation, that clearly won't be added. But I do agree with Mafiapuppet in that if you can grip your dick, you'll never really be bored.

[raymond]

I think that insanity shouldn't only occur for player, but for NPCs also, after some kind of stress such as a loss of somebody close to them, loneliness, or too long having panic or stressed moodlet. So they would be either hostile, talking to themselves and not respond to player, or doing some random unpredictable stuff.

Edit: sorry if that was mentioned above, I didn't find anything similar

[Rathlord]

Heya Raymond, NPCs are being programmed to use the exact same code players do, so in theory- in the end- they should be susceptible to everything we are.

[EchelontheEyeless]

On 7/29/2013 at 5:57 PM, Rathlord said:

Heya guys,

 

I'm making this thread to discuss the future of mental health in PZ. Lemmy mentioned at one point that he wanted this in the game in some form or another, and so I wanted to take this space to post my thoughts on it and hear everyone elses'.

 

So without further ado:

 

Sanity

 

Introduces a sanity moodle to the game. There is no positive version of the sanity moodle, just a negative:

 

Imbalanced: You are shaken by the current events and have been physically affected by them.

• You get a slight negative modifier to your interactions with NPC's
• You may occasionally hear small sounds that don't exist

Unstable: You have been severely affected by the apocalypse, and it shows.

• You have a negative modifier to interactions with NPC's
• You often hear sounds that don't exist
• You have trouble sleeping

Insane: Your mental health is fully compromised.

• You have a large negative modifier to interactions with NPC's
• You often hear sounds that don't exist
• You have trouble sleeping
• You occasionally see things that aren't there, including NPC's, loot, and zombies. These images are exactly like their real counterparts, but can have no effect on the player and disappear after a time.
• You talk to yourself sometimes, causing a small amount of sound
• You have a chance to be much more or much less susceptible to the panic moodle
• For short periods of time you won't see moodles that are affecting you

With the introduction of insanity comes two new traits in the beginning of the game:

 

Strong Willed: Much more likely to stay sane, and stops at "Unstable," not able to become completely insane.

Unstable: Much more susceptible to insanity

 

And finally, things that effect your sanity:

 

Antidepressants: Help stave off insanity, but become addicting

Alcohol: Can temporarily stave off insanity, but long term increases it if addicted

Corpses: Nearby corpses negatively influence sanity (implemented after cleaning up corpses)

Home: Staying in the same house more than once increases sanity

Cigarettes: Temporarily helps increase sanity

Losing a Companion: Losing a companion severely effects sanity

Becoming Injured: Being injured or sick decreases sanity

 

Nota Bene, the insanity effects are quite strong and should take a large amount of time to build up, particularly to the final stage. It should only become a problem if you neglect it or if you take the unstable trait.

Love this idea. And just the layout you described. I've always liked the concept of sanity. And it'd definitely be good for immersion considering the survivor never really reacts as much as they should to everything besides having the "panic" moodlet lol.