PC Sprains: Anti-Fun Implementation

T

Teebus

New member
The way sprains are currently implemented is, as the title suggest, anti-fun. 

Let's define anti-fun vs challenging, just so it's clear what I mean. Anti-fun gameplay is gameplay that is designed to simply not allow fun, often done unintentionally of course. This can be due to challenge, or due to mechanics, or other means. Challenging gameplay is not necessarily unfun, and can in fact be more fun, through added challenges or obstacles the player needs to overcome.

The way sprains are currently designed is anti-fun, due mostly to the penalty received to the heal timer. Performing very simple (and sometimes necessary) actions such as running, jumping, falling a block, swinging/firing a weapon, or using a tool all add a hefty increase to the timer in order for you to heal. Ten minutes may not seem like a long time, but in-game it's often 1/6th of your day, even less of your available daytime. The simple act of dropping from a single block height increases the timer by a hefty 30 seconds. Put simply: Your actions are impaired and you are simply unable to heal if you want to continue to perform normal actions. Because of this, you're incentivized to spend 10 minutes doing nearly nothing at all. Ergo, anti-fun.

Compare this to bone breaks. When a bone is broken, you can apply a splint or a cast. That splint or cast is applied nearly instantly, and you are then able to continue performing actions. They will be hindered, and so half the challenge lies in not getting broken limbs, while the other half lies in playing around your hindered condition while broken. The timer will count down, and eventually you'll heal. No penalty for continuing to play and do things necessary to enjoy the game. Added challenge that improves fun by forcing us to avoid poor choices, or deal with the consequences when they occur.

Sprains don't need to be removed, however my suggestion would be to severely reduce the penalty or, better yet, to remove it altogether, even if that means compensating with some other negative effect.

 
There is a perk you can get that allows you to cure sprains instantly with a splint (or a cast).  There are perks to reduce the effects of falling and therefore your chance of getting a sprain or break.  You have options to fix this problem.  It's all about what is more important to you for your enjoyment.

So I guess I'm saying it isn't broken, from my perspective.

One big pet peeve of mine used to be that if you had too many, or too severe, afflictions it was possible to be rooted in place, unable to move or attack or anything.  THAT was a major annoyance and anti-fun but  it seems that they fixed it.

EDIT: effects, doh

 
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Welcome to the forums! :)

On its own, the sprain is a little rough; but I don't usually let them hinder me, and they do heal up in a decent enough time IMO. But it makes everything you do "feel wrong", so that's not great.

On the total though, there's couple other things to take into account:

1) Steroids are pretty plentiful, and those will prevent a sprain from worsening. If you have one, a sprain is a non-issue.

2) If you happen to spec (part-) INT, the physician perk will allow you to just remove sprains directly.

While I agree the "default" sprain is a bit rough, the improved cures you can rather easily obtain make it almost pointless. Harmless at least. The roughness of the early ones seems like a feature to overcome.. IMO, in that sense, it's all right.

 
Needing to spec into something to remove an anti-fun mechanic isn't really a fix. Again, I'll give a comparison for example in Parkour. It's not necessary to be able to jump 3 blocks high, but it's not anti-fun to be unable to. By speccing into it, you gain the ability, and some fun.

Sprained limbs also happen due to damage, not just due to encumbrance, and so steroids don't prevent the status effect. As an example of my own, I have parkour, and as I said before, simply falling from a one-block height adds 30s to the timer roughly 50% of the time in testing. Jumping added to the timer every time, as did sprinting. Even with an agile build, the effect would not remove itself unless I chose not to jump, sprint, or chance any falls for 10 minutes. Which again, I'd label as 'anti-fun' gameplay, and isn't something that should require a perk to remove. 

 
theFlu said:
View attachment 32624

They don't prevent the effect, or remove it. They remove the timer-increase and damage from any and all actions. Just tested in A22.1.
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I see what you meant. Again, it's a nice insert, but it doesn't really change the anti-fun nature of the mechanic itself. As I stated in the original message, I think sprains can be good, and add challenge. I think the added timer aspect is poorly implemented, and should be removed.

 
Teebus said:
Again, it's a nice insert, but it doesn't really change the anti-fun nature of the mechanic itself.
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Fair; I just sorta disagree ;)

It is rough, and annoying, for sure; but some things need to be - to make the game both a survival game, and have a good progress system. The roughness of the early game and overcoming it is part of the "story". You can't feel powerful if you weren't weak to begin with.

Now, I do have 4k hours in the game, so I'm fully aware that my experience isn't the same as everyone else's; I rarely get a status effect without intentionally doing something silly. So when you say it's "anti-fun", I take your word for it - but I'm happy to disagree ;)

 
theFlu said:
Fair; I just sorta disagree ;)

It is rough, and annoying, for sure; but some things need to be - to make the game both a survival game, and have a good progress system. The roughness of the early game and overcoming it is part of the "story". You can't feel powerful if you weren't weak to begin with.

Now, I do have 4k hours in the game, so I'm fully aware that my experience isn't the same as everyone else's; I rarely get a status effect without intentionally doing something silly. So when you say it's "anti-fun", I take your word for it - but I'm happy to disagree ;)
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I pointed to the idea of 'challenging' in my initial post as well. I agree with you. Challenge is good. I've also said a few times that the solution doesn't have to only be "Remove sprain/Remove time pentaly." It can be compensated with another downside, in fact I would encourage that they do.

You say things need to be rough and annoying, for the sake of a survival game and a good progression system. To some point, we agree. But simply 'hey man things need to be hard' is a weak argument to make, and I'll explain why.

Here's a few examples of how to make the game harder: Add 'Black Lung' as a debuff, making a player completely incapable of harvesting resources after a set amount have been harvested; Add realistic vehicle collision and remove the ability to drive over terrain with vehicles that clearly shouldn't, this would include the ability to be thrown from a vehicle and die; Make the infection cause you to deal 90% less damage and move 50% slower until it is healed. These options are not necessarily good or fun options, though they do make the game more difficult, specifically by incentivizing you not to do (or punishing you for doing) simple things you need or want to do in the game. With a sprain, you've already made the mistake. The punishment is now the thing incentivizing you to not do things that are simple and necessary for basic gameplay; in other words, the best move may simply be to box yourself in and do nothing for 10 minutes, unless you want to spend a perk point. This is bad game design.

Now, compare bone breaks below.

The Challenge: Avoid long falls and avoid being hit, especially by powerful enemies.
The Punishment: If you fail to do one or the other, there's a chance you end up hindered. To remedy that hindrance, you can apply medical tools like a splint or a cast. Your healing will be sped up and some mobility restored, but not all of it. To punish your mistake, you must now play for ~25 minutes with this 'debuff' but you're still allowed to do all the things needed to play the game. This does not disincentivize you from looting and fighting zombies, but rather incentivizes you to do so more carefully, or to spec into things like Endurance or Agility to avoid breaks from hits or falls.

The bold text is where the key point lies. Though I've used a lot of words to lay it all out, the concept really is quite simple: Incentivizing players to not play the game (or not do necessary things) for an extended period of time is anti-fun. Is there challenge? Yes, but challenge can be added in fun ways. FP have had their ups and downs with this since I bought the game in 2016, but sprains are a pain point that have persisted.

 
Sprains are hardly a big deal in this game.  I pretty much just ignore them because they really don't matter much.  If I really care, one single point into physician lets you instantly cure it.  That's hardly a big deal.  You can get one point without any effort.  If that's too much for you, then using steroids to run around without a problem while waiting for the timer to go away is easy.

When it comes down to it, a broken bone is far worse than a sprain.  You have the negative effects even if you use a cast or splint and can't change that with any perks.  A sprain only increases the timer if you are sprinting (legs) or swinging something (arms).  And the negative effects of having the sprain are minimal.  Sure, they take time to decrease, but will decrease without you doing anything unless you never stop running or never stop swinging stuff around.  If you get a sprained leg, you can continue to do everything you would do if you happen to be in a POI since you're rarely running in a POI and don't usually need to do a lot of jumping for most POI.  So your timer will decrease while you continue to clear out the POI without any problems.  If it's a sprained arm, the timer will keep going up while you're doing a POI, but when you are done and going back to base or a trader or wherever else, the timer will be decreasing and usually will be done before you need to swing anything again.

I don't think I've ever stopped doing stuff for a sprain unless the timer was under a minute and I wanted to just let it expire.  Otherwise, I just do everything like I normally would.  The negative effects just really aren't a big deal.  On the other hand, a broken leg has sometimes meant that I've purposely sat around for the entire timer doing nothing until it finished healing because it was too much trouble to run around if I didn't have a vehicle yet.  So, as I said, I'd rather the sprain over a break anytime.  And if I just don't feel like waiting on it, one single point is hardly a big deal for instant cures, like I mentioned.

Points in parkour will remove sprains and breaks from falling if you want to do that.  Better armor will reduce all debuff chances.  Certain armor will increase healing speeds for debuffs.  There are just so many options to avoid it being an issue.

 
Teebus said:
but you're still allowed to do all the things needed to play the game. This does not disincentivize you from looting and fighting zombies, but rather incentivizes you to do so more carefully, or to spec into things like Endurance or Agility to avoid breaks from hits or falls.
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The same applies to sprains just as well, no?

Combat:

Sprinting (for combat reasons) increases the timer by basically counting it up; you "lose" 1 sec every sec. Doesn't stop you from fighting, or even sprinting in combat, just makes you fight more carefully.

Jumping:

Jumping is required in a few POIs for a couple times, that's it. You can usually build around the necessary jumps if you want to save the 30 secs on the timer. For no other purpose are you required to jump. I'd assume you're jumping way too much if you see this as an issue; but as jumping costs so much stamina, it's hard to imagine a proper bunny-hopper enjoying this game ... :)

Other things like salvage, tree cutting, mining, are all completely unaffected.

Speccing into Parkour to avoid sprain, I don't see a big difference to speccing into INT to fix them... Although I don't think parkour even prevents combat-sprains..? (I do spec it a lot, 2,5m jumps are awesome, but I'm not sure of the current iteration... :) )

 
Teebus said:
I pointed to the idea of 'challenging' in my initial post as well. I agree with you. Challenge is good. I've also said a few times that the solution doesn't have to only be "Remove sprain/Remove time pentaly." It can be compensated with another downside, in fact I would encourage that they do.

You say things need to be rough and annoying, for the sake of a survival game and a good progression system. To some point, we agree. But simply 'hey man things need to be hard' is a weak argument to make, and I'll explain why.

Here's a few examples of how to make the game harder: Add 'Black Lung' as a debuff, making a player completely incapable of harvesting resources after a set amount have been harvested; Add realistic vehicle collision and remove the ability to drive over terrain with vehicles that clearly shouldn't, this would include the ability to be thrown from a vehicle and die; Make the infection cause you to deal 90% less damage and move 50% slower until it is healed. These options are not necessarily good or fun options, though they do make the game more difficult, specifically by incentivizing you not to do (or punishing you for doing) simple things you need or want to do in the game. With a sprain, you've already made the mistake. The punishment is now the thing incentivizing you to not do things that are simple and necessary for basic gameplay; in other words, the best move may simply be to box yourself in and do nothing for 10 minutes, unless you want to spend a perk point. This is bad game design.

Now, compare bone breaks below.

The Challenge: Avoid long falls and avoid being hit, especially by powerful enemies.
The Punishment: If you fail to do one or the other, there's a chance you end up hindered. To remedy that hindrance, you can apply medical tools like a splint or a cast. Your healing will be sped up and some mobility restored, but not all of it. To punish your mistake, you must now play for ~25 minutes with this 'debuff' but you're still allowed to do all the things needed to play the game. This does not disincentivize you from looting and fighting zombies, but rather incentivizes you to do so more carefully, or to spec into things like Endurance or Agility to avoid breaks from hits or falls.

The bold text is where the key point lies. Though I've used a lot of words to lay it all out, the concept really is quite simple: Incentivizing players to not play the game (or not do necessary things) for an extended period of time is anti-fun. Is there challenge? Yes, but challenge can be added in fun ways. FP have had their ups and downs with this since I bought the game in 2016, but sprains are a pain point that have persisted.
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Why is it ok for breaks to need a splint/cast, but not ok for a strain to require a steroid?

 
Sprains feel kind of pointless, but even Abiotic Factor uses them. Not a huge deal for me, as annoying as they are.

What does need to go though, is spraining/breaking my arm when a zombie hits me in the leg, or sprains/breaks my leg when hitting me in the torso. That was supposed to have been fixed a few years ago and it still happens on occasion.

 
Teebus said:
the best move may simply be to box yourself in and do nothing for 10 minutes, unless you want to spend a perk point. This is bad game design.
Click to expand...


I've never taken this option. Even if I don't have a steroid I simply keep playing with the sprain. If it is a sprained leg I will walk mostly but still run and jump even though it adds time. If it is a sprained arm I will do mainly normal melee attacks but still do power attacks at times even though it adds time. But mostly I take a few steroids until the medication time equals or exceeds the sprain healing time. 

Any alternative you can think of that would feel satisfactory to you would be labeled as "unfun" by someone else. Bad game design would have been if they had not provided any kind of remedy. But they do AND it's common. The fun may not be in playing while suffering from a debuff but it is in treating that debuff with the right medication and then playing unhindered. Its the same type of fun that restoring your fullness by eating a meal provides, and restoring your damaged base by repairing blocks with the right kinds of materials provides, and restoring yourself when impaired by dysentery, infection, or fatigue. 

I don't disagree that getting any debuff isn't particularly fun in and of itself. However, when infected it makes getting honey from a stump a much more fun event than when not infected and when sprained if you have a steroid on hand it is also rewarding to apply that med and then keep going completely unaffected.

 
I really have no problem with the way sprains are implemented today. However, one change I would support is making it so that:

  1. splints take the place of steroids and applying one (without a point in Physician) would prevent further injury from normal activity (a hit from a zombie could still cause a break)
  2. steroids instead would simply remove the movement penalties, but not prevent further injury
 
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I would like the splint to lower the heal time in the same way as a bandage lowers the heal time for a scrape.   And the 1st level perk in physician can heal it instantly.

But i'm not bothered by the sprains.  just make smarter decisions.  like if you are going to be jumping down the side of a building, put some a block a few blocks down, rinse and repeat as you go down the building.  Make sure you play defensively and heal up after each combat, to avoid the chance for a sprain in combat.  

If you have a sprain, don't sprint/power attack for a while.  I usually head back to my base, and putz around there crafting/cooking/organizing/mining while the sprain heals.  There are plenty of activities you can do that need one anyways that don't hurt the sprain.

 
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