News 2 13 - Changes to first aid

NEWS article 2-13:

Dateline 11/21/2002: CHANGES TO FIRST AID

Recent enhancements in First Aid techniques will now allow those with more experience to remove bandages applied by those less experienced in significantly less time. Bandages that have been loosened or damaged so that blood is flowing will be removable in half the normal time.

05/22/2001 - Recent improvements in bandaging materials have now been put into place, so that when you unwrap a wound that has been healed, it will no longer cause injury and it may be unwrapped more quickly.

11/21/2002 - After years of work, the following initial changes are now ready for release, and will be released over the next week, in stages. As usual, you are welcome (and encouraged) to post on the boards to discuss these changes in the Tend/Unwrap/First Aid - Healing Systems topic in Empath folder (https://www.play.net/forums/messages.asp?forum=20&category=17&topic=18) at any time, but as this is an ongoing (staged) release over the next week, please do not BUG, ASSIST, or REPORT about any perceived problems you may encounter until it is announced that all stages are complete.

The following is a partial list of things changed:

1 - Wounds that were previously either tendable or not tendable will now be in one of four states. Completely Tendable, Completely Tendable with Roundtime, Partially Tendable with Roundtime, and Not Tendable at All.

2 - Experience awards for tending wounds will now be awarded over an extended period of time, and will be commensurate with the duration of the tending of the wound. Repeated tendings of the same wound by the same person prior to the natural expiration of the tending will forfeit the bulk of the experience for the previous tendings that is yet to be awarded. [To clarify, if you repeatedly tend, unwrap, tend, unwrap, tend... you will only get the bulk of the first aid experience for the FINAL tending.] In other words, "pet bleeders" are a bad thing in terms of gaining experience.

3 - Duration of tended wounds will now have a random component which will cause the previous rapid-fire of untendings to cease to take place. To be clear, not all wounds of the same severity tended by someone with the same skill will stay tended for the same duration.

4 - All bleeding wounds will have a chance of getting diseased. In other words, pet bleeders are now much more dangerous.

5 - Back wounds will be *much* more difficult to tend on yourself.

6 - Attempting to tend your own tail may result in muffled snickering from your friends.

7 - Empathic bonus for First Aid reduced commensurate with overall systemic modifications. This means that the previous built-in skill bonus for Empaths has been reduced (no, we can't say what the bonus used to be or what the bonus is now). In other words, this reduction brings this bonus in line with other bonuses that have been (and are continuing to be) adjusted across the board for all guilds to bring them within our limits for "maximum bonuses". For now this will seem like a negative thing, but in the long run, it is not only a good thing, but also a requirement.

8 - BUG FIX: Tending adjusted to ensure correct target. In other words, if you try to TEND FLO RIGHT ARM, and FLOSET is in the room, but FLOAKEL is elsewhere, the system will not tell you that that FLOAKEL is not present (this used to be the case in this example if you typed FLO instead of the entire name, because FLOAKEL might come before FLOSET).

9 - Implementation of TEND HELP.

10 - Maximum duration of Tended wounds is now 30 minutes. Note that the randomization factor still applies, but that this is the new maximum duration.

11 - The Roundtime for unwrapping a bandage has been lessened. Currently, when unwrapping a bandage on a wound that isn't even bleeding anymore, the roundtime is 20 seconds. That'll change to 10 seconds. In other words, all unwrap times are being cut in half.

12 - Finally, First Aid has now been removed from the Alternate Experience System, effective immediately.

GameMaster Towint B'niyvyl