Suggestion: Better indicators of Health Level

[TheAmazingYant]

I would like to suggest tweaking indicators of how wounded a player is. Currently, at 75% health a player starts bleeding out, and once you become critically short on health the player's heartbeat and breathing can be heard. Finally, the player reaches the "almost dead" stage, with the blurry black-and-white vision, coughing, and etc.

There currently isn't a way for a player to know if he is at 70% health or 35% health. This can be problematic in pitched firefights, as soldiers leave the front lines to seek medical attention for what amounts to a boo-boo on their knee.

I suggest tweaking the effects that currently indicate low health: the coughing, wheezing, heartbeat, blood-splatter effect, and etc. For example, at 75% bleeding would start, but maybe without the blood-splatter image that pops up every few seconds. That effect might start appearing at 50-60% damage. The wheezing could start at 30-40%, and coughing at 15-20%. Honestly, the mechanism for indicating a players approximate level of health isn't really my interest, as long as something exists the give the player a quick assessment of how close they are to croaking.

By making this change a soldier would be able to determine the severity of his wounds, and make a decision whether to stay and fight or to seek medical treatment immediately.

[Rudd]

agreed, something like red only at the fringes of the player view when only just bleeding would be good, i.e. you are a little hurt "boo-boo", but still combat effective

[daranz]

Ask a medic. They can see how injured you are with greater precision.

[Harrod200]

Ask a medic. They can see how injured you are with greater precision.

Only if you're below 50%.

[MadTommy]

Negative. The health bar was removed for good reason.. and this sounds like a re-invention of it, to a degree.

What is it's purpose? If it is simply to let the player know his health level, i don't think its a good idea. The levels of bleed already give enough indication of this already.

IMO if you are wounded you need medical attention, doesn't matter how wounded.

[Mj Pain]

Yepp. any wound..
Bang! u been hit.
-Aargh, run for cover!
-Can i get a medic over here?
Medic comes:
-You´re alright, you just been shot in the ***.
- Eh..ok.
-You´re good to go!

[SleepyHe4d]

Omg I tripped and fell down the 3 foot hill.... MEDEVAAAAAC!!!!

Imo we DO need a health bar, but not one so precise... maybe like a written word right above the stamina bar that has 4 or 5 different levels such as Healthy, Bruised, Bleeding, Mortal, Dead or something along those lines.

Also PLEASE take out the coughing and screaming till you're at like 25% and bloody screen at like 50% and maybe lower when you start bleeding to like 65%.

[Tirak]

Maybe some kind of labored breathing or the occasional grunt at the lower end of the 25% no bleed zone, but after that it's all elementary, you're bleeding, find a medic, and if you're seeing Black and White, it's not an old movie, find a medic and get healed.

Offtopic: Bring back .756 bleed, this new stuff is murder!

[General_J0k3r]

errr... no

i like it the way it is. IRL i think on most occasions ur out of order if hit. in pr you can still fight with the blood effect going on. judge according to what hit you. if it was a G3, bugger out. if it was you falling down stairs, nevermind .

[Scot]

Yeah so if you go just 75% the effect isn't as strong and it gets stronger as it gets worse?

[Bonsai]

That`s why I have my personal medic...most of the time!

[Scot]

Well not everyone can have their personal butt wipers Mr Commander (Eddie gave me that job )

[TheAmazingYant]

To make my previous comments more clear:

I don't like the idea of a health bar, especially one that makes it perfectly clear what a player's health levels are. I just suggest a tweaking of the current system so that it is easier to determine if you are critically wounded or if you've just taken a minor flesh wound.

To argue from the perspective of realism, I doubt it takes a trained physician to know that a gaping, softball-sized hole where one of your kidneys used to be is something you should probably have attended to with all due haste. On the other hand, just getting winged by a stray bullet isn't really anything to panic about. At the present there doesn't seem to be a quick way to determine the difference between the two, as the symptoms in game are identical.

Like I said before, I don't think the health bar is a good idea at all. I am only suggesting that the current audio/visual symptoms could be tweaked to make it more clear to the player the severity of their wounds. This would allow a player to better assess their physical condition, which would make it easier for a player to decide whether to seek immediate treatment or to stay in the fight until it is more safe to visit the medic.

It shouldn't be too exact of a system, which would just create a de facto health bar. It only needs to be exact enough so that the player can get a reasonable "ballpark" figure for their health level.

[youm0nt]

Maybe something like a diagram of the player's body with red sections that indicate where you've been hit? Or maybe something like the old school Rainbow Six games with the health indicators?

[Zegel]

To argue for realism is to argue in favor of this, but not only that, it has practical implications. It isn't just for visual funsies. There's been several cases where I've needed to decide, after being hit, whether to pull out immediately, or throw a bandage and suck it up. In this current version, the player is incapable from distinguishing from a shit in the hand and a shit in an artery. If you're at 70%, throw a bandage and stick in the fight and pull out after you drop an insurgent or two, but if you're at 40% you're vision is going to go to shit soon and you'll have no idea.

[Sadist_Cain]

I think the system is realistic as is

You can get clipped by a bullet and it'll be just a scratch and youll scream MEDIC MEDIC!!!! when you're fine

Other times in a firefight you can be hit bad and be in "shock" as it were, you think you're fine until a medic shouts at you DUDE YOU'RE ALMOST DEAD!!! "no I'm fine" Que black n white dizziness and a collapse to the floor as you lose blood, ohhh Maybe I'm not then

A wounded soldier dosn't usually know how badly injured he is until its too late

[HELPME7]

I have never seen a soldier in the US army with an indicator of what percentage their health is after being hit by a bullet... Admin's should closethis to stupidity

[Zegel]

Your mom should have aborted you for stupidity.

1) The thread is not about a health indicator.
2) Your body has it's own, natural, build it and incredibly accurate health indicator.. It's called PAIN, BLEEDING, and LOOKING DOWN TO SEE THE SIZE OF THE WOUND. All of these can be better communicated to the player.

And that's what the thread is about.

[TheAmazingYant]

I have never seen a soldier in the US army with an indicator of what percentage their health is after being hit by a bullet... Admin's should closethis to stupidity

Actually, there already is a set of indicators, what with the bleeding, and the groaning, and the blurred vision, and so forth. These audio/visual indicators let a player know that they are wounded, bleeding, and approaching death. All I'm proposing is tweaking the current indicators which already exist in the game. I'd appreciate it if you would actually take the time to read my posts before you comment on them.

But perhaps I have done a poor job of presenting my case, so I'll give a third try:

Currently there are 5 different statuses for a player: Healthy, Bleeding (<75% Health), Bleeding, Coughing, and Heartbeat (A low level of health, which I can only assume is <25%), the blurred, black-and-white, tunnel vision stage of near-death (something like <10% health), and the final stage of death.

My suggestion is to close the considerably large gap between the start of the "Bleeding" stage at <75% health and the "Severely wounded" stage that begins at <25% health. In my experience it can take 3 to 4 minutes of bleeding to reach the <25% stage, if you are only barely wounded enough to start bleeding (to put it another way, it takes 3-4 minutes to bleed from 75% health to 25% health, where you begin coughing). This wide gap makes it difficult to determine if you slightly wounded or more severely wounded.

I am under the assumption that - in real life - it would be fairly easy for someone to determine if a wound needs immediate medical treatment or if it is better to wait a short while before seeking a medic (say, if a more pressing danger to your well being was the group of insurgents rapidly charging your position). Through the myriad cuts and scrapes I've endured and witnessed in life, I am pretty sure I can tell the difference between a measly boo-boo and a traumatic injury that requires a hasty call to the paramedics. The problem I am attempting to address is that it is currently not possible to make that kind of judgment call about your condition, which I consider unrealistic. By narrowing the aforementioned "gap" between the first and second stages of bleeding, players would be able to better assess their physical condition. This would leave soldiers more capable of deciding whether to stand and fight, or to retreat to seek first aid.

This requires no health bar or other visual indication of health that is not CURRENTLY used in Project Reality! I really can't emphasize that enough, it seems.

And if that whole spiel is still too much for people to read through and consider before posting, I'll just write this, which sums up the gist of what I'm suggesting: Start the coughing noise earlier in the bleeding "cycle"!


And now for something refreshingly off topic:

In this current version, the player is incapable from distinguishing from a shit in the hand and a shit in an artery.

[MadTommy]

Your mom should have aborted you for stupidity.

That is amazingly rude and immature. There is no place for you on these forums with an attitude like that.

AmazingYant... it doesn't really matter how many times or how you say it.. what you are asking for is a more accurate way to know your health level.
However you dress it up, i believe this is a step backwards and not a good idea. Having uncertainty between 70% and 30% health is the whole point of it.. you are not meant to know how hurt you are. When you get shot... unless you happen to be a bullet wound specialist.. you wont know how badly the wound is. And this is how it should be in pr too.