It's time for a Plague!

[Sevenless]

Some games tried it (both intentionally and not). People wrote some proper academic research papers over infamous Zul'Gurub corrupted blood incident. And while it might be very interesting social experiment the mechanic itself seem to be not healthy for games in general and provide a one-off kind of fun more often than not.

Please don't give jorb ideas for "one off fun" in a permadeath game >.>

[Hrenli]

If something, animals should spread diseases.

*place for arbitrary bad joke about sex with animals*

[Mr_Bober]

Jorb has explicitly stated that disease that disincentivizes player interaction won't happen.

My quote from Jorb is legit, and it's where I got the idea for this thread from.
Diseases could be introduced without them being infectious, so they don't spread (and don't disincentives social interaction). The idea of spreading comes from Jorb's quote.

I, for another, don't think that this is a good idea as the possible ways to exploit this (to grief others) are way too plentiful.

I don't really see it. And if there is any, it's likely linked to the spreading part, which could easily be removed without taking away the whole system.

salem has disease you want things that help the game not give it aids... salem is full of aids thats why its dead
-1 to disease/madness/temperature
it just griefs the playerbase and drives the game into the ground just look at salem lol

My experience with Salem was brief, so comparing the two doesn't really help.
The point of diseases is not to make the game annoying, it's to make it a tad more challenging. Right now the survival component is almost non-existent, and diseases are one of the very few things that can't be stopped by a palisade.
With an immune system kind of thing, you could easily be healthy all the time if you take it into account. If you ignore it, you get sick more easily.

The griefability and general unenjoyable-ness of this concept makes me want it not implemented.

This would lead to a lot of "not playing", which is kindo crap.

I understand the feeling, but I don't think we should only introduce things that make life easier. The game is too easy already.
Players always complain about things that make life a bit harder, like midges, pretty much all wounds, hunger and satiation... If all of those were gone, or never introduced in the first place, the game would be boring as hell.

I believe that, with right tweaks, a deeper health system would be a great addition. Diseases would fit right into it, and people could focus more on the medicine aspect of the game, just like they do now with cooking or tailoring.

Some games tried it (both intentionally and not). People wrote some proper academic research papers over infamous Zul'Gurub corrupted blood incident. And while it might be very interesting social experiment the mechanic itself seem to be not healthy for games in general and provide a one-off kind of fun more often than not.

I'm familiar with it, and it's very far from what I'm suggesting. The Corrupted Blood incident was possible because of a bug, and the "disease" was untreatable and incurable. It also spread at an incredibly fast rate, because all you needed is to be close to someone for a second to spread it.

If something, animals should spread diseases.

Having living animals spread it seems too much. It would make animal farms extremely hazardous, and that's already an annoying thing to take care of, no need for a deadly component to it.
Animal corpses, on the other hand, could. I'm thinking about the tons of dead animals that are left there to rot. People would have to butcher animals within an hour or so from the kill, to avoid any chance of getting a disease. Newbies that go around collecting corpses would have to decide if it's worth it to get that dead moose left there several hours ago by someone, or if it's not.

[Granger]

I, for another, don't think that this is a good idea as the possible ways to exploit this (to grief others) are way too plentiful.

I don't really see it. And if there is any, it's likely linked to the spreading part, which could easily be removed without taking away the whole system.

The spreading part is the one I see as being exploited to grief, the usual suspects would build settlements in which they would cultivate the most deadly strain and then infect others with it.

On the other hand: without being able to spread between characters the mechanic would fail as all possible ways to get infected would simply be delegated to alts.

[iamahh]

inb4 darkness regions on the map, with specific darkness animal versions

[Sevenless]

The griefability and general unenjoyable-ness of this concept makes me want it not implemented.

This would lead to a lot of "not playing", which is kindo crap.

I understand the feeling, but I don't think we should only introduce things that make life easier. The game is too easy already.
Players always complain about things that make life a bit harder, like midges, pretty much all wounds, hunger and satiation... If all of those were gone, or never introduced in the first place, the game would be boring as hell.

Nothing about my argument involved how difficult or easy this mechanic would be. Only that how it would be difficult would make the game significantly worse. Those really aren't the same thing. Anything that super enables griefers isn't a great idea either.

Salem plague alts idling in town to make it uninhabitable has already happened.

[Mr_Bober]

The spreading part is the one I see as being exploited to grief, the usual suspects would build settlements in which they would cultivate the most deadly strain and then infect others with it.

It still wouldn't be easy to forcibly infect others. And some equipment could be introduced to reduce risk of infection, useful when you go to trade for example. Those, in addition to the visual effect, would make it easy to avoid spending too much time with an infected individual. And just like we have vigilantes going around killing criminals, I could see people going around killing infected in community areas (eg. CF) if they don't accept a cure.

On the other hand: without being able to spread between characters the mechanic would fail as all possible ways to get infected would simply be delegated to alts.

Most mechanics can be avoided with alts, it doesn't mean we shouldn't have them.
People use alts for building and terraforming to avoid screwing up hunger. They use it to make quicksilver, harvest wax, and pick crabs and hedgehogs. They use it to camp localised resources. They use alts for fighting, alts for scouting, and alts for crime.
Just because they do, it doesn't mean all those obstacles should be removed.

Anything that super enables griefers isn't a great idea either.

Salem plague alts idling in town to make it uninhabitable has already happened.

I don't really see all this griefers thing.
Salem had Boston, which you were required to visit to access specific game content. Haven does not, so "plague alts idling" doesn't really work.

And if spreading is really the issue, it can be removed. There are plenty of diseases that are not infectious.

[Ysh]

I see mostly two options: contact with a carrier, or having a weak immune system

Replace this ''or'' with ''and'' and I think it will mitigate some concern from the other postings in this thread. As long as player have primary agency regarding contract disease and not the man spreading it, I do not think griefing will be very bad problem.

[Sevenless]

I don't really see all this griefers thing.
Salem had Boston, which you were required to visit to access specific game content. Haven does not, so "plague alts idling" doesn't really work.

And if spreading is really the issue, it can be removed. There are plenty of diseases that are not infectious.

I like the idea of all public community events becoming impossible to attend with mains due to plague alts. I like only going to markets on an alt because we're never going to be safe for certain from someone alting around with diseases for shiggles.

We don't have a pre-defined town, but this kills any ability for player defined markets/fairs/etc to exist for mains. It undoes a lot of what Vgates have enabled, which is quite frankly a lot of fun content.

[Aceb]

As end of the world even, fun, other than that, a big NO.