Upgrades to the First Aid Skill

[RatherAzure]

Main Problem: First Aid is kinda.... useless. In a game about zombie survival, you'd think that First Aid would be the frontrunner on the list of "Most Sought After Skills" but its anything but that. Instead, it's been replaced by players being smarter about their strategy, opting to take "Thin Skinned" and "Slow Healer" and just never get hurt in the first place. Players never really need to go deep on First Aid because even one encounter with a zombie that didn't even result in a bite could end in their demise.

 

Problem 1: The opportunity for the treatment for deep wounds are incredibly rare because deep wounds are incredibly rare. They are only received from either being a dumbass (crashing a car or vaulting a broken window with glass in it) or being shot at (only in Multiplayer).

• Solution: Make Deep Wounds more common.
  • Players have a small chance of sustaining scratches, lacerations, deep wounds and burns from everyday tasks (Cooking, Carpentry, Metalworking etc), affected by Panic, Stress, Tiredness and Good/Bad Luck.
  • "Thin Skinned" has a chance of transforming what would be a scratch into a laceration and what would be a laceration into a deep wound.

 

Problem 2: It is not rewarding enough for someone to go deep on First Aid. The only difference between Level 1 and Level 10 is the effectiveness of treatments and insight into severity of wounds. Because apparently everybody in Knox County knows how to apply bandages that completely staunch bleeding and sew shut wounds. What?

• Solution: Players under First Aid 3 cannot completely staunch bleeding on a wound that is greater than a scratch.
  • They can apply "Badly Bandaged" to anything greater than a scratch to staunch bleeding, but the wound will open through the bandage if the player starts jogging or sprinting.
    • They'll need to re-apply the bandage if that happens.
  • They'll need to either have or see someone with First Aid 3 in order to bandage a wound like normal.
• Solution: Players under First Aid 4-5 cannot sew shut wounds at all.
  • Players with First Aid 4 can attempt to sew shut a wound with a 50% chance of failure and making the wound worse (taking longer to heal)
  • Players with First Aid 5 can sew shut wounds like normal.

 

(Not Really A) Problem 3: Some players have been switching Zombie Infection sources to only "Bitten" because they don't want to play the minigame of wondering whether or not they've been infected after every single zombie encounter. And to be honest, neither do I.

• Solution: At First Aid 4, players can craft a "Knox Infection Testing Kit" (Name WIP), detecting the presence of the virus immediately (or after 10 minutes).

 

Problem 4: First Aid has no reward for making it to level 7+. Most other skills do.

• Solution: Upon reaching Level 7, the Player is granted suppression to the negative trait: Hemophobic. It no longer bothers them after performing that many operations either on themselves or on others.

 

Here are my thoughts on the matter. First Aid, in its current state might as well not even be there as its strengths either rarely happen, are easily avoidable or are easily treatable.

Edited February 12, 2022 by RatherAzure
Grammar and typos.

[Irken Empire]

Now I totally understand what you're talking about, if you're careful enough you'll never have to use first aid thus making it useles, but for the sake of balance should you really force people into getting wounds trough random everyday actions just to make this skill useful and then forbid them from tending to their wounds till they've graduated med school during the apocalypse, that is if they didn't die since they bled out like pigs because no one on the server or SP game had more then 3 levels in first aid. There's no need for all of this, some people are just careful and they wou't get hurt and some are not, so this is more of a from person to person thing, the only thing that should be balanced is the seriousness of regular infections, right now sleep and regular infection is something you take for granted, since it's badly developed / underdeveloped, but the reality is much more grim. In a post-apocalyptic world with no hospitals and professional medical treatment a single infection could mean death and unless you clean those wounds every now and then you could very well die, a bullet wound is something you would not be able to deal with unless you've got atleast some skill in first aid.
We should just wait and see what the devs had in mind, they said that they would make you black out if you've been really tired for too long, they must have something planned for first aid too.

[RatherAzure]

11 hours ago, The Nine Tailed Fox said:

Should you really force people into getting wounds trough random everyday actions just to make this skill useful[...]

 

This implies that the chances for an injury is 20/30/40%. I mean more like 1%, 3%, 5%. Not going to be a massive bother (or a bother at all) but the chance is always there and not negligible. Think of it as a downside of performing actions while incredibly tired or incredibly panicked. Or you know, just plain unlucky.

[undeadryker]

IMO first aid is already quite useful on its own. It's how you need to level it up that's the issue especially when it comes to singleplayer. That's why thin-skinned is so useful, because no one should be looking to get injured to begin with. There should be another way to get First Aid experience.

 

Your solution for Problem 1: Increasing the effects of thin-skinned is definitely necessary to make it riskier. But as for randomly getting damaged in every day tasks? Not a good idea. If anything, that specifically should be for the clumsy trait and the panic and tired moodles.

 

Your solution for Problem 2: For bandaging and staunching the flow, that's "already in the game" to a degree. Bandages get dirtier faster and risk of infection is higher (combine that with the bandages being dirtier faster and you can see how bad that is). IIRC dirty bandages also fall off/expire faster which leads to exposed wounds, although that is just a personal anecdote. Not a fan of your solution, as even someone with no basic first aid experience will know that "blood out of body = bad. Stop blood coming out = good". I'm 100% on board for the sewing wounds restriction though.

 

Your solution for Problem 3: Being infected by the "I wanna eat brains disease" should be reworked in general. Your character feeling anxious after getting bitten (duh) or scratched is a huge indicator that they're doomed. That's certainly an interesting idea/concept. I can see it being more useful in multiplayer if they make infection less obvious and deadly. But even then if you see someone keel over, you can expect them to get up near instantaneously.

 

Your solution for Problem 4: 100% on board. I'd be fine with it never actually suppressing panic if it makes it too powerful, but at least allowing Hemophobic players to perform first aid on others when they have plenty of experience would be useful.

[Irken Empire]

10 hours ago, RatherAzure said:

 

This implies that the chances for an injury is 20/30/40%. I mean more like 1%, 3%, 5%. Not going to be a massive bother (or a bother at all) but the chance is always there and not negligible. Think of it as a downside of performing actions while incredibly tired or incredibly panicked. Or you know, just plain unlucky.

Yeah, but we need a lot of balance to wounds, I wouldn't mind getting burned or scratched more likely  in every day actions, when I'm panicked etc. but right now a singe scratch slows you down too much, laceration/deep wound is like your hand fell off for a period of time, for what it's worth right now you do NOT WANT to have to use first aid, and to make wounds more common!? NOOOO