Changes to New-crit

[Sollessa]

So my dislike of new-crit is not a secret at this point.  I've given up on seeing it reverted and, after looking at PRs, I see that a reversion was already shut down so it's extremely unlikely that it would ever happen.  

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/11815

So instead of trying to bring back the old system I will propose one change to the new system that will fix it's greatest flaw.  The greatest flaw with new-crit is how players are basically immune to death until they've ticked out to brain damage or cardiac failure.  I've seen, and have also experienced personally, players that have gotten wailed on by energy swords, guns, lasers, ect. and have taken hundreds of brute/burn damage and just lie on the ground, gasping for breath as they slowly tick out to brain damage or heart failure.  I've even seen players take hundreds of damage and still stand up to fight back or even put their own attacker into crit or even kill them.  This is, honestly, unacceptable.  Player conflict is one of the core mechanics of the server and the fact that someone can get hit with an energy sword dozens of times before they finally die is unacceptable.

Therefore, here is my proposed change.  Everything about how new-crit works now will remain exactly the same.  Players have a chance to go into shock at the same point, and then cardiac arrest and what-not BUT once the player has taken 200+ combined brute/burn damage they die.  Period, no exceptions.  That means that if the player is sitting at zero HP or -20 or whatever, they can still go into shock and die from untreated wounds but that ALSO means that if the player takes a large amount of lethal damage from lasers or swords or whatever other weapons then they will still die.  This change will make it so that terror spiders don't have to wait to wrap people who are ticking out to cardiac failure if they just keep biting them.  It'll also make it so that holoparasites will die properly.  It'll make it so that players who have already lost the fight don't have a chance to just stand back up suddenly and perhaps pull a taser or stun weapon out to turn the tide.  It'll remove a lot of the RNG from combat in a system that is already woefully RNG heavy.

Edited August 16, 2019 by Sollessa
Struck out an invalid point

[Kyet]

Having tested newcrit today:

• If you simply attack someone until they die, the amount of hits required to kill them seems excessive. 2-4 full stetchkin clips. 24 esword hits. 39 egun shots. 22 dual esword hits. 43 welder hits.
• However, only a fraction of that (e.g: one stetchkin clip) is enough to deal someone a mortal wound that will kill them in a minute or so. During that minute they can get back up temporarily, even grab a weapon and shoot you.
• The advantage of this is that it makes fights more interesting, gives people a chance after they're ambushed, etc. I think it is actually a net benefit to the game.
• The disadvantage is that the more damage you are applying, the longer it subjectively seems to take for the person to die. Because the more hits you're doing, the more damage you're dealing, and the more it seems like you SHOULD have exhausted their health a long time ago. I had a few times when I VV'ed someone after they died and they had >500 brute or burn damage before dying.
• As such the main tweak I suggest to newcrit is that the threshold at which someone simply dies from accumulated damage should be significantly lower. It shouldn't take >500 points of brute or burn to trigger instant death. If you're already in crit and you take say another 100 combined new damage beyond what put you in crit, you should probably just die at that point, without any RNG involved.

That said, the system definitely has pros and cons.

It makes fights more interesting (less one-sided) but it also strains immersion at times. It feels a little ridiculous the number of bullets I can pump into someone in a row before they die. But, equally, giving someone the ability to surprise you in combat may help keep the game fresh and make fights actually better.

[Coul]

I’m personally under the impression that no one should survive past -100 health, that’s 200 combined damage of any type, crit occurring at 0 health as it does now, this is what it used to be and makes sense as all the weapons in the game were balanced around this. This keeps the changes of new crit while still not turning people into tanks. While this can make fights more interesting people can accommodate for this by using stuns along with their murder weapons and it can also be underwhelming in situations like executions where it’s unlikely the person you’re executing will be able to fight back

[Gaty]

4 hours ago, Kyet said:

Having tested newcrit today:

• If you simply attack someone until they die, the amount of hits required to kill them seems excessive. 2-4 full stetchkin clips. 24 esword hits. 39 egun shots. 22 dual esword hits. 43 welder hits.
• However, only a fraction of that (e.g: one stetchkin clip) is enough to deal someone a mortal wound that will kill them in a minute or so. During that minute they can get back up temporarily, even grab a weapon and shoot you.
• The advantage of this is that it makes fights more interesting, gives people a chance after they're ambushed, etc. I think it is actually a net benefit to the game.
• The disadvantage is that the more damage you are applying, the longer it subjectively seems to take for the person to die. Because the more hits you're doing, the more damage you're dealing, and the more it seems like you SHOULD have exhausted their health a long time ago. I had a few times when I VV'ed someone after they died and they had >500 brute or burn damage before dying.
• As such the main tweak I suggest to newcrit is that the threshold at which someone simply dies from accumulated damage should be significantly lower. It shouldn't take >500 points of brute or burn to trigger instant death. If you're already in crit and you take say another 100 combined new damage beyond what put you in crit, you should probably just die at that point, without any RNG involved.

That said, the system definitely has pros and cons.

It makes fights more interesting (less one-sided) but it also strains immersion at times. It feels a little ridiculous the number of bullets I can pump into someone in a row before they die. But, equally, giving someone the ability to surprise you in combat may help keep the game fresh and make fights actually better.

I mean, if a person has a gun or a knife and you only have your punches, then the fight should probably be one-sided because...well...you don't have a weapon.

What people in newcrit do now is either permakilling (spacing, debraining) as it is faster and prevents you from getting back into the fight or simply using stunning weapons which also still makes combat one-sided as you cannot counter a stunlock.

In my opinion, even with 300 health it would be a bit annoying, as now you would need 5 shoots of .375 to kill, which would still mean an entire magazine to down someone (or several hits of the weapon), it is better than being inmortal until RNG decides to kill you, and probably way less frustrating but is not much better.

[EvadableMoxie]

In my opinion, the problem isn't that people don't die. The problem is they don't go down, or if they do they get back up, even in crit. All that needs to happen is have it so once you hit critical, you'll be incapacitated fairly shortly without some serious drugs.  I'm not sure the best way to accomplish this... via stamina damage seems like it would work.

I can tell you it's really annoying with new crit how you get two idiots fist fighting in the bar and both of them can keep a bar fight going until they've dealt 300 damage to eachother.  Everything becames a lethal struggle with new crit because it's so easy to get into a position where you'll die eventually but so hard to be put into a position where you can no longer fight. You can't hurt someone to the point where they stop without hurting them enough that they'll die without medical attention. If you don't have stuns and zipties you have to flat out murder them to get them to stop, and it makes proper force escalation very difficult. 

Edited August 16, 2019 by EvadableMoxie

[BakBak]

Earlier today when we had terrors, I was trying to kill two monkeys so I can lay more eggs and they were still standing despite being below -75 (which USED to be the max amount of damage a monkey could take before death) and it took at least 2-5 seconds after I gotten them that low when they should of been dropped before that -75 mark and this applies to everyone else who has newcrit and people below -100 hp can still fight you which is frustrating since it took awhile for those monkeys earlier to even start going into shock when they probably should had earlier once they reached halfway into crit.

The fact we now have to wait for shock and the heart to go into cardiac arrest just for them to die is simply horrible and the wrong direction to go in as it simply takes too long to for one to die. It also increases the workload of medbay in which it takes a good bit of time to stabilize someone from heart failure and shock which may involve multiple defibs and injections just to treat while we have another patient dying next to them and we can't get to them at the same time without risk of the first patient dying and going braindead which will either require a very swift surgery to defib or cloning.

I agree with what EvadableMoxie said about force escalation. There is no proper escalation at all since you can't properly knock people out in para with simple brute force but instead you have to with chems or special items. I rarely see people stop a fist fight in fear of their own health, instead I see them simply go until one cannot go anymore and with newcrit they will both go until they are both dead or one is dead.

I took a brief look at the revert post on github provided by the link from the OP and Alffd mentioned that he feels like we are focusing on the PvP aspect and not the PvE and RP aspect. Newcrit gets used the most from PvP and the only PvE is in what is now Lavaland and breaches and hardly anyone RPs when they are dying because they are too focused on trying to either get to medbay, they can't actually rp because they aren't conscious due to newcrit dropping them -400 and the doctors are too busy rushing to treat them since they can die at any moment and only have a 3 minute window to defib and if they can't do rush surgery for brain damage being treated within said window to defib and hopefully revive them.

[Sollessa]

You can't RP while in crit anyways since taking 15+ oxygen damage removes your ability to speak.  I agree that people standing back up again while in crit is really, REALLY irritating and has actually gotten me killed while playing as a terror spider before.  You could make it so that you take stamina damage yeah while in critical but that's about all I can think of.

[necaladun]

1 minute ago, Sollessa said:

You can't RP while in crit anyways since taking 15+ oxygen damage removes your ability to speak.

Me holds his hands up in surrender.

Me flips the bird, begging for death.

Me accepts his fate.

 

[Sollessa]

Fine, you can't speak and most people don't use emotes anyways unless they're the mime or it's one of the few they have macro'ed.  

[Rurik]

In honesty, the only real problem I have with the new system is being unable to speak while in it/while having lack of 02. When the change was initially put forth I liked the idea of it, being unable to speak when spaced without 02 makes sense and even sounds cool. But in practice it just comes off as an annoying hassle because I cant give my cheesy one liners before death anymore. Getting mortally wounded and having to take out my PDA to say anything detracts from the experience, imo.

[Eler00]

*slides in and quietly drops his mostly ignored crit patch https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/11543

[BakBak]

Wow I didn't even know about that and  that is merged from what it looks like? Well if it is, we still have the same problem from before which is frustrating and from what I can tell the chance to just instantly die from damage doesn't appear to be high enough since brain damage is very heavily weighted on the issue.

[Regular Joe]

1 hour ago, TDS said:

*slides in and quietly drops his mostly ignored crit patch https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/11543

 

9 hours ago, EvadableMoxie said:

In my opinion, the problem isn't that people don't die. The problem is they don't go down, or if they do they get back up, even in crit. All that needs to happen is have it so once you hit critical, you'll be incapacitated fairly shortly without some serious drugs.  I'm not sure the best way to accomplish this... via stamina damage seems like it would work.

I noted it when it appeared - that's a while ago! - seems reasonable. There would more set in stone thresholds to trigger the crit effect, so that you could, if you got the time and gear, make sure someone falls down, while the random element, as described by Kyet, stays in that kind of combat, in which you get hit, but the opponent does not have the opportunity, time or willing to make sure just you are going to stay down. Which kind of suits the simulation, and deals with the not-going-down issue, which is an issue indeed in the latter situations. You might or might not survive your wounds due to fighting nukies or xenos and such, fighting as a part of a mob - but if an antag needs down you and has the tools and the opportunity for it, they could do it.

TDS's patch having certain heart attack at -300 bruteburn would be one way to have that point. Stamina damage, sounds a possibility for me, too. If crit effects gave stamina damage, over time and increasing in severity, that would do the thing aswell. Excessive stamina damage, resulting of the critical state, would prevent healing a crit patient to full health and action in matter of seconds. The oxygen damage though plays that role, too, being that steep, and dealing brain damage - which will make things more interesting to treat, if somebody was critting for long time. So, stamina damage would not be an alternative for oxydamage, but another feature. On soundloss, I've had the habit to me hardly-understandable words or screams if urgently needed to communicate, I wouldn't personally say that as a problem.

On the question, I'd prefer TDS's tweak. For the reason, it would give the certain point of damage in which you become disabled, rather in which you die. That said, I agree with the general issue here of people not going down after excessive violence. Otherwise I like newcrit as a feature.

Edited August 16, 2019 by Regular Joe

[Gaty]

To be honest, in my experience, I just had a problem with someone getting up once, and of course was slime vs immortal human so I died.

Most of the times, people just stay on the floor unconscious during an excessive amount of time until they die due to RNG.

Edited August 16, 2019 by Gaty

[Tarhalindur]

A way to fix this would be to have each hit after crit have a chance to insta-knock out. (Depending on how much damage the hit deals and how much damage they currently have)

Once already knocked out, further hits have a chance to instantly kill. We keep the damage threshold in case someone gets really lucky with RNG.