Something games often aim to do is mix a tolerable amount of realism into the players’ collective fantasy. Whether it’s in role-playing games, action platformers, first-person shooters, or even MMOs, storytellers and mechanic designers look to realism as a way to give the experience context, reference, and resonance. One element we included early in the development of the Infinities franchise to introduce realism is “surgical health.” The initial concept we had was that a character’s health pool could be split into body parts, and if someone took a lot of damage to a particular part, it would be debilitated until healed. For instance, if a character was hit hard in the legs, that character would move slower or even stop moving if the part was completely depleted. On the other hand, healers and support characters could have effects which protect certain parts or restore their functionality even when low on health. Surgical health brings an element of realism to the debuffs which are prevalent in games these days, but not to the point of excessive complication or immersion breaking. If anything, I’d wager it will increase immersion.
With surgical health in place, damage dealers can wear down body parts to inflict pain and debilitate their enemies. We designed most attacks in The Continuum Order with surgical components to hit a random body part, so there is a certain unpredictability to the system. However, our strikers have special attacks which are “smart surgical,” named so for their functionality of dealing damage to whatever body part is weakest. The Assassin and Wraith even possess a surgical targeting model which allows them to manually select body parts to really bring the pain. As a damage dealer, the realism factor of hitting someone really hard in the head and causing his accuracy to drop or even blind him completely should be really rewarding. It even brings a bit of that old school gaming feel when it comes to PvE where an enemy might have an ability which requires the use of a certain part or perhaps is particularly weakened when a part is destroyed.
A big issue we had when first discussing surgical health and damage was how to counter it. Answer #1, the obvious, was to also include surgical healing and protection, in addition to specialized healers having access to smart and manual surgical effects. Being that healers always have a lot more to monitor than any other role, we leaned more on smart effects than manual. In this way, a healer/support can intervene and tell an enemy, “no, you will not stop my striker from running at you and wrecking your face.” Answer #2 was the inclusion of a mitigating attribute that a character could utilize called “Dispersion.” The primary function of Dispersion is to spread a portion of incoming damage across his body. For instance, if a character has 10% Dispersion and takes a 200 damage shot to the Head, only 180 goes to the head and the other 20 is divided across the other parts. Think of this in the same way that bulletproof vests catch and absorb the impact of bullets. At first, we included Dispersion as a buildable, primary attribute on gear, but later shifted Dispersion to be included on only active and passive defensive effects through abilities and specializations. As a defensive attribute that softens the blow from all damage sources, Dispersion is important in PvE for tank characters especially. crucial for any players in PvP combat, and overall adds a meaningful counterplay to surgical damage effects.
When all was said and done, surgical health became one of the signature mechanics of Infinities along with others such as Tide and Gambits. The goal for all of these mechanics is to add value to the play experience, include an element of realism, and act as variables on which a battle can turn at any moment. If you want to read more on Surgical Health and how it operates, check out the wiki page here: Surgical Health. Stay tuned and if you have any questions or feedback, leave a comment!