Injury System is way too brutal

[Archaven]

May i ask if all injury works the same now? Which is -25% health. In PoE there's bruised ribs, concussion, frostbite, severe burn. etc. i'd like that injury system better.

[Tartantyco]

 

 

Actually, it’s completely the other way around. The better at game you are, the less your opinion on how easy injury effects are matters. I mean, if you aren’t knocked out you don’t get penalties so it doesn’t really matter to you how severe penalties are. They might as well not exist ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

In general, the problem with injury systems is the fact that they penalize those who are already bad (for some values of the word) while having limited or no effect on masters of the game.

 

I honestly believe you people are actually making this argument. Seriously, play on Story Mode or stop playing all together.

 

I honestly believe you are completely misinterpreting what I'm saying. Playing on Story Mode will not make the deleterious effects of injuries go away. It will not solve the problem of injuries effects being to severe; it will merely make the game easier, and as I am not complaining about the games difficulty *that won't matter*.

 

 

Except the effects of the injuries aren't too severe. You can easily keep going with one or two injuries on a character. Most encounters shouldn't do too much damage to your characters, and if someone's particularly fragile as a consequence of injury, you need to act accordingly. Move them to the rear, have them target weaker enemies, etc.

 

But here's the big one, and stay with me here, you're supposed to rest when you get injured. The entire purpose of the system is to incentivize you to rest when you've taken an injury. Deciding whether to rest or keep going is supposed to be a decision where you have to weigh the risks.

 

The injury system is behaving as it should. If you get injured, you should try to rest. If you can't or don't want to rest, you simply have to adjust your tactics accordingly. This is where stuff like challenge, and varied gameplay, and gameplay longevity, and all that other stuff comes from.

 

May i ask if all injury works the same now? Which is -25% health. In PoE there's bruised ribs, concussion, frostbite, severe burn. etc. i'd like that injury system better.

 

You get an injury and -25% health per injury. The injury depends on what damage knocked you out(A cold spell=Frostbite, Blunt weapon=Broken bones, etc.).

[Gairnulf]

May i ask if all injury works the same now? Which is -25% health. In PoE there's bruised ribs, concussion, frostbite, severe burn. etc. i'd like that injury system better.

The injury effects are still there, but each injury you survive also reduces your Hit Points cap by 25% a fourth untreated injury kills you permanently.

[Archaven]

In PoE, when i get an injury (and if it's not too steep), i'd still go on with encounters. I tend to spend all my abilities (on each character) before i rest (minimizing the waste of spells/abilities). With per encounter, there isn't a need for me to do that anymore. It seems the injury now is kind of an artificial way to force your character into resting as empowering isn't making such a huge impact (which was their selling point).

[Mikeymoonshine]

Ok so food works on other characters so my issue was just due to a bug. With that in mind I don't see the issue as there is plenty of food in the game and i've survived fights with an injured party member or two on the difficulties i've played (classic and hard). 

[hilfazer]

Injury system in PoE2 is strikingly similar to that of Legends of Eisenwald - wound decreases max HP (and not just that), 4 wounds = dead, can't be healed through normal heals.

 

Maybe they will copy Hard West too - if you don't heal a wound but fight with it instead it will turn into, let's call it, healed wound that gives bonuses and some penalties and also prevents you from getting same wound again.

[mostundesired]

I'll throw my hat in. I think the problem with the injury system is the fact that it exists for the sole purpose of forcing you to rest. Ideally, injuries should be balanced not to force you to rest; resting should be something you do to keep your characters from getting to worn out. That sounds contradictory, but I guess what I'm saying is that as is, it's too straight forward.

 

For one, it's unreasonable for injuries to be healed from resting and eating food. I'm not usually one to argue for realism in a game, but I think it's pertinent in this case. It's too easy to do, and virtually negates the decision of "do I rest, or do I press on?" Of course, you rest, at different times depending on how much of a health penalty you can handle. I think that instead, if you get an injury, it should slow you down until you get it treated. Food doesn't treat an injury, it gives you energy (i.e., endurance). Bandages, stitches, and giving the injured body part a rest, that's how you treat an injury.

 

For the sake of both verisimilitude and balance, what if you can offset the endurance decrease with food, but the actual injury type itself (bruised ribs, concussions, etc.) stays until you rest it off with bandages or some such? Of course, for that to work, you'd have to make injuries give a severe enough debuff that after two or three, you're strongly encouraged to rest. I also think it would make sense to keep the stacking of four injuries = death system they have currently.

 

TL;DR, I think they should make the process of removing the health decrease different from the process of removing an injury like a concussion, and make the latter have a more severe effect on combat. This way, it's less of an obligation and more of a decision.

 

I can tell you right now, most people would decide to rest than to press on, even taking skill level into account; some people just don't like working with characters that aren't at 100%. Anyone who doesn't mind is already much less likely to rest, even with the system as is, as can be seen in this very thread.

[Katarack21]

 

 

 

Actually, it’s completely the other way around. The better at game you are, the less your opinion on how easy injury effects are matters. I mean, if you aren’t knocked out you don’t get penalties so it doesn’t really matter to you how severe penalties are. They might as well not exist ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

In general, the problem with injury systems is the fact that they penalize those who are already bad (for some values of the word) while having limited or no effect on masters of the game.

 

I honestly believe you people are actually making this argument. Seriously, play on Story Mode or stop playing all together.

 

I honestly believe you are completely misinterpreting what I'm saying. Playing on Story Mode will not make the deleterious effects of injuries go away. It will not solve the problem of injuries effects being to severe; it will merely make the game easier, and as I am not complaining about the games difficulty *that won't matter*.

 

 

Except the effects of the injuries aren't too severe. You can easily keep going with one or two injuries on a character. Most encounters shouldn't do too much damage to your characters, and if someone's particularly fragile as a consequence of injury, you need to act accordingly. Move them to the rear, have them target weaker enemies, etc.

 

But here's the big one, and stay with me here, you're supposed to rest when you get injured. The entire purpose of the system is to incentivize you to rest when you've taken an injury. Deciding whether to rest or keep going is supposed to be a decision where you have to weigh the risks.

 

The injury system is behaving as it should. If you get injured, you should try to rest. If you can't or don't want to rest, you simply have to adjust your tactics accordingly. This is where stuff like challenge, and varied gameplay, and gameplay longevity, and all that other stuff comes from.

 

1) You and I have a disagreement about the severity of the injury mechanic. That's okay. We don't have to insult each other over that.

 

2) Yes, you're exactly right--the whole point of the injury system is to control when you rest. At -50% health, that is 2 injuries, there is no "weighing the risk" to consider. At -50% health, *everybody is fragile* and you *should rest*. EVERY TIME. There is no meaningful "weighing". There is no meaningful "choice". At -50% healht, rest. End of story. That's not a choice, that's a hard push to take a specific action. "Oh, I'm half dead? I should should rest just in case I have a bad roll and something outside my control happens." That sort of thing--because half-dead makes you fragile regardless of what your character class is, *especially* considering that two more injuries *makes you dead* regardless of your character class.

 

There is no ability to "take more" or "be less fragile" with injuries. Four injuries and your dead, regardless of who you are, what your class is, or what your stats are. If you have two injuries, you're halfway to dead--you're fragile, period, because of the way injuries work. Everybody is equally vulnerable to injuries and everybody is equally fragile regarding injuries.

Edited November 19, 2017 by Katarack21

[demeisen]

 

​Yes, you're exactly right--the whole point of the injury system is to control when you rest. At -50% health, that is 2 injuries, there is no "weighing the risk" to consider.

​

​I see the point you're making, and I more or less agree with it.  There isn't enough granularity, so there isn't a great deal of real choice involved.

​

​Personally I'm in favor of a finer grained system, so there would be more meaningful choice.  In fact, perhaps it could be a number, and they could call it something like... I dunno... maybe "health", and have it restored only by resting.  There could be another one called something like... just making stuff up here - "endurance", which regenerated and could be healed by spells and potions, and damage to endurance would also hurt the long term health pool.  Then injuries could hurt your stats for a while until they were healed.

​

​Then they could have significant limitations on rest so the game didn't turn into "fight + rest + fight + rest", and you were incentivized to keep going.

​

​Something like that. 

 

​

[Zap Gun For Hire]

If I may provide an alternate viewpoint. ANY mechanic where the solution is to constantly spam something  probably is flawed on some level, whether it be an "I Win" button in combat or an "I sleep after every third fight" button.

 

Saying "Get Gud" really isn't an answer. Nor is "Play on lower difficulty".  Mostly because people aren't complaining about the philosophy behind the mechanic, but the implementation. 

 

It seems to me that people aren't saying there should be no punishment for failure; they're saying that there should be more degrees of punishment.

 

Perhaps there could be a way to cure/lessen one or two injuries without resting.  Field Triage in the first game was a way to get back Health points. Maybe bring that back and have it heal (some of) the Endurance loss but NOT the other effects of injuries. Injuries still matter in this case, but they're not as bad.  And the choice comes in with player builds if they choose to take Field Triage over something just as good or better.

 

Maybe have it be 1/6 or 1/8 loss of Health from each knockdown/trap/whatever.  There are plenty of ways to tweak this mechanic without sacrificing the principle of it.

Edited November 19, 2017 by Zap Gun For Hire

[Zap Gun For Hire]

As an aside, if it was only getting knocked down in combat which led to a 25% loss in Endurance, I could see (if not agree with) some of the arguments for leaving it as-is.  Especially the comparison to dying in other cRPGs.

 

But that ISN'T the only source.  AIUI, any and all injuries lead to this 25% per loss. Getting injuries from traps and scripted interactions throws a pretty big wild card into this discussion, I think.  Especially if there are going to be as many scripted interactions as there was in the White March.

 

Just something to keep in mind here as we discuss this topic.

[KDubya]

I think the four wounds = death thing is fine.

 

After two wounds you rest ..... if it was eight wounds = death you'd probably still rest at the halfway point.

 

I think "empower" is the only at rest thing left in the game, everything else is per encounter. So you need to rest only to get back empowers or to bring health back to full. It'd be almost as easy to just get rid of wounds and resting and just have everything be usable per encounter. I mean we are pretty much there now.

 

I liked the old health/endurance system from PoE and wish it was back but this system is not so bad.

 

They just need to have some quests be on a timer so that resting every battle is not the norm and that there is a reason to press on while being wounded or even when your empowers are gone.

[Christliar]

I was going to write a scathing post, but I unconvinced myself. This injury and empower systems are pointless, people are still going to rest after every fight anyway, which is why Obs decided to remove the semi-Vancian spellcasting and the Health/Endurance mechanic. They have to limit resting, that's where the problem is, the too free resting. Now that the only penalty to getting knocked down is pathetic I think they should actually do it. Maybe like Knights of the Chalice does it, you are only allowed to rest at camping sites strewn throughout the dungeons. These sites should become fewer and fewer at each more difficult mode. I think that's the only solution for resting to not remain a vestigial appendage that makes no sense.

[morhilane]

If I may provide an alternate viewpoint. ANY mechanic where the solution is to constantly spam something  probably is flawed on some level, whether it be an "I Win" button in combat or an "I sleep after every third fight" button.

 

Saying "Get Gud" really isn't an answer. Nor is "Play on lower difficulty".  Mostly because people aren't complaining about the philosophy behind the mechanic, but the implementation. 

 

It seems to me that people aren't saying there should be no punishment for failure; they're saying that there should be more degrees of punishment.

Most enemies are level 7+ in the beta, you are under-geared and under-leveled.

 

If you're character are getting downed in every fights that you need to rest after 2 (if not even each ones), "get gud" and "lower difficulty" are the right answers. You aren't supposed to have characters drop to 0 HP in every fights, if that is happening either the content is too hard for you or you really need to pay more attention to your character builds and tactics.

[KingDiamond]

I was going to write a scathing post, but I unconvinced myself. This injury and empower systems are pointless, people are still going to rest after every fight anyway, which is why Obs decided to remove the semi-Vancian spellcasting and the Health/Endurance mechanic. They have to limit resting, that's where the problem is, the too free resting. Now that the only penalty to getting knocked down is pathetic I think they should actually do it. Maybe like Knights of the Chalice does it, you are only allowed to rest at camping sites strewn throughout the dungeons. These sites should become fewer and fewer at each more difficult mode. I think that's the only solution for resting to not remain a vestigial appendage that makes no sense.

 

They should allowed resting only at camping sites and bring back per rest spell or completely remove resting and if you get to 0 HP you die.  There is no point in resting if you can rest all the time.

[Tartantyco]

1) You and I have a disagreement about the severity of the injury mechanic. That's okay. We don't have to insult each other over that.

2) Yes, you're exactly right--the whole point of the injury system is to control when you rest. At -50% health, that is 2 injuries, there is no "weighing the risk" to consider. At -50% health, *everybody is fragile* and you *should rest*. EVERY TIME. There is no meaningful "weighing". There is no meaningful "choice". At -50% healht, rest. End of story. That's not a choice, that's a hard push to take a specific action. "Oh, I'm half dead? I should should rest just in case I have a bad roll and something outside my control happens." That sort of thing--because half-dead makes you fragile regardless of what your character class is, *especially* considering that two more injuries *makes you dead* regardless of your character class.

 

There is no ability to "take more" or "be less fragile" with injuries. Four injuries and your dead, regardless of who you are, what your class is, or what your stats are. If you have two injuries, you're halfway to dead--you're fragile, period, because of the way injuries work. Everybody is equally vulnerable to injuries and everybody is equally fragile regarding injuries.

 

It is a meaningful choice once we have meals that give more substantial rest bonuses, and we already have inn bonuses. If you power up your party with rest bonuses, you're not going to rest and throw away those just because one of your characters got an injury. Or maybe you have to rest because the one that got an injury is a frontline tank who's now walking around with a serious deflection penalty. Or you may not want to rest simply because you don't want to waste meals or ingredients for meals just because your caster got a boo boo.

[Mikeymoonshine]

Why didn't they just keep it as the camping supplies thing and just not litter them everywhere? Like cool abilities are still per encounter and it is wounds and empower you have to worry about now. Maybe make resting free on story mode or whatever. 

[Christliar]

Why didn't they just keep it as the camping supplies thing and just not litter them everywhere? Like cool abilities are still per encounter and it is wounds and empower you have to worry about now. Maybe make resting free on story mode or whatever. 

Because people were trekking back every chance they got to rest at an inn. Yes, it's tedious, but people did it anyway. The solution is one-time use camping sites in dungeons and the dungeon to slam the door behind you so you can't go back. With an an autosave just before you enter the dungeon as a sort of compromise, so you don't end up trapped in the dungeon with no save file and no way out.

[Katarack21]

 

1) You and I have a disagreement about the severity of the injury mechanic. That's okay. We don't have to insult each other over that.

2) Yes, you're exactly right--the whole point of the injury system is to control when you rest. At -50% health, that is 2 injuries, there is no "weighing the risk" to consider. At -50% health, *everybody is fragile* and you *should rest*. EVERY TIME. There is no meaningful "weighing". There is no meaningful "choice". At -50% healht, rest. End of story. That's not a choice, that's a hard push to take a specific action. "Oh, I'm half dead? I should should rest just in case I have a bad roll and something outside my control happens." That sort of thing--because half-dead makes you fragile regardless of what your character class is, *especially* considering that two more injuries *makes you dead* regardless of your character class.

 

There is no ability to "take more" or "be less fragile" with injuries. Four injuries and your dead, regardless of who you are, what your class is, or what your stats are. If you have two injuries, you're halfway to dead--you're fragile, period, because of the way injuries work. Everybody is equally vulnerable to injuries and everybody is equally fragile regarding injuries.

 

It is a meaningful choice once we have meals that give more substantial rest bonuses, and we already have inn bonuses. If you power up your party with rest bonuses, you're not going to rest and throw away those just because one of your characters got an injury. Or maybe you have to rest because the one that got an injury is a frontline tank who's now walking around with a serious deflection penalty. Or you may not want to rest simply because you don't want to waste meals or ingredients for meals just because your caster got a boo boo.

 

But if your frontline tank got knocked out once and then got hit by one trap, you're at 50% health and you *will* rest. Every time--no choice and no debate, because going into combat like that is just tactically unsound. Same thing if two people got knocked out and then you didn't have the mechanics to undo that trap and had to trigger it--then you rest, every time, because the injury system doesn't have enough gradience and doesn't allow meaningful choice once you hit two injuries.

[Tartantyco]

Why didn't they just keep it as the camping supplies thing and just not litter them everywhere? Like cool abilities are still per encounter and it is wounds and empower you have to worry about now. Maybe make resting free on story mode or whatever. 

 

Probably because it's not a very good game mechanic. It's just an entirely segregated resource that exists for a single purpose. Even without considering the injury system, the changes to the food system, incorporating existing and underused resources to have multiple uses, is a substantial improvement.

[Tartantyco]

But if your frontline tank got knocked out once and then got hit by one trap, you're at 50% health and you *will* rest. Every time--no choice and no debate, because going into combat like that is just tactically unsound. Same thing if two people got knocked out and then you didn't have the mechanics to undo that trap and had to trigger it--then you rest, every time, because the injury system doesn't have enough gradience and doesn't allow meaningful choice once you hit two injuries.

 

First of all, two injuries is a big thing. It's not something you just pick up casually strolling through the world. It means you've been through some tough fights, or that you weren't paying attention and walked into a some traps. In that case, you rest.

 

Secondly, you can still keep going with two injuries on your frontline tank. Health is not a very important stat for the tank, it's defenses like deflection that matter for them. My tanks barely take any damage in any encounter, and on the rare occasion that they get injured, as long as it doesn't affect their defensive capabilities, it's not a big deal.

 

Thirdly, it's usually everybody else other than the tanks who get injured, and you have more options as to how you use them to avoid incoming damage in future encounters(For me it's my Barbarian and Wizard that end up with injuries. I just change my tactics when that happens.).

 

Fourthly, you really shouldn't be in a situation where you routinely keep going with two or three injuries on a character. It should be a situation you find yourself in if you're playing the hardest difficulty the hardest way, or if you've severely misplayed the game. 

 

Your argument is still based on the idea that injuries should be common. They shouldn't. You shouldn't be in a situation where you routinely have characters running around with two or three injuries. You should rest before that point. As it stands right now, one injury is rarely game-stopping. Two injuries are manageable if they don't affect critical stats, but you should rest if possible. Three injuries is where you need to rest right now unless something prohibits you from doing so.

[Christliar]

But if your frontline tank got knocked out once and then got hit by one trap, you're at 50% health and you *will* rest. Every time--no choice and no debate, because going into combat like that is just tactically unsound. Same thing if two people got knocked out and then you didn't have the mechanics to undo that trap and had to trigger it--then you rest, every time, because the injury system doesn't have enough gradience and doesn't allow meaningful choice once you hit two injuries.

 

 

 

 

Glancing over the fact that you CHOOSE to rest at 50% injuries, the game doesn't auto-rest for you, even though the point is not to give you a choice, but you aren't reading anyway, so whatever, this logic can be applied to everything. Why go into combat with 2 less high level spells? That wouldn't be "tactically smart". Because you can? You can with 50% injuries as well, you have this insane idea that it's somehow impossible, but anyway, so what? Why is it such a big problem that it doesn't give you this "meaningful choice"? Again, it's not supposed to be a choice, but let's pretend it's about that. Why is it so hard to just rest if you think you can't go on? The game doesn't incentivize not resting, especially if you don't have good food, so I don't get it.

Edited November 19, 2017 by Christliar

[Mikeymoonshine]

 

Why didn't they just keep it as the camping supplies thing and just not litter them everywhere? Like cool abilities are still per encounter and it is wounds and empower you have to worry about now. Maybe make resting free on story mode or whatever. 

 

Probably because it's not a very good game mechanic. It's just an entirely segregated resource that exists for a single purpose. Even without considering the injury system, the changes to the food system, incorporating existing and underused resources to have multiple uses, is a substantial improvement.

 

 

I don't see how them having one purpose makes it a bad mechanic but ok. Food is so abundant in the beta you can rest after every fight and carry on with some pretty decent bonuses. I think the idea of making food rare, overly expensive or limited on how much you can carry is also a little unlikely so I assume this will be how it is at launch. 

 

I'm not really all that fussed about this issue anyway, I just don't see how this system is more challenging than the one in the last game. 

[Tartantyco]

I wouldn't say it's more challenging. Just more dynamic.

[Mikeymoonshine]

 

Why didn't they just keep it as the camping supplies thing and just not litter them everywhere? Like cool abilities are still per encounter and it is wounds and empower you have to worry about now. Maybe make resting free on story mode or whatever. 

Because people were trekking back every chance they got to rest at an inn. Yes, it's tedious, but people did it anyway. The solution is one-time use camping sites in dungeons and the dungeon to slam the door behind you so you can't go back. With an an autosave just before you enter the dungeon as a sort of compromise, so you don't end up trapped in the dungeon with no save file and no way out.

 

 

It amazes me that people would do that and not just turn down the difficulty or respec their party and I am in no way some video game veteran who plays on POTD. I do actually like that idea though because camping supplies were a little annoying. I enjoyed the challenge of making the ones I had last and as I got better at the game I found I almost never needed the ones that were always conveniently placed in every dungeon.