6+ months of agonizing "realism" nerfs have ruined this game

[Random_dragon]

The speed penalty from being chilly is what will most often fuck over underdressed spring starts. Expanding tolerance of temperature could be done by a few different methods.

One is to expand the range of comfortable temperatures by a few degrees in both direction. Ideally only reducing the ranges of warm and chilly, not pushing back the more extreme levels.

Another way is to have it reduce the speed and/or morale penalties by a flat amount OR percentage. Thus you could be chilly but still able to function, or merely not bothered by it if we wanted Outdoorsman to stay a morale-only effect.

[Sheb]

Just want to pop in to say that I don’t really mind most of these features, even the filthy things. Sure, the feature doesn’t add much, but it make sense, and add a lower tiear of clothing in your char progression ( Filthy clothe < clean clothes < reinforced cargo pants and practical stuff < Army clothing < Survivor clothing). Zombie clothing wasn’t really useful after early game (apart from some piece of valuable gear that are worth fixing/cleaning). I mean, if you had to do laundry for your own clothing, that’d be too much.

Bumping up soap’s spawn rate might be a good idea though.

I think a lot of the issues with those tediums chores isn’t that they’re in the game, but that there is so little automation of them. I think they add to the game by making taking care of your survivor more complex, but there should be a way to get through them with a minimum of keypresses once your character is set up. In the same way that batch-crafting clean water or installing a foodco kitchen buddy make managing thirst trivial, there should be buttons to batch-clean and mend clothings, batch-fix all damaged parts on a car and so on. Also, being able to outsource those tasks to a NPC housekeeper would be good (“Clean and mend all clothings items dropped in this zone”).

[Random_dragon]

I agree that the idea COULD have merit. The problem is horrible mismangement of its implementation. In game balance terms, pre-existing factors do a better job of making zombie clothes a less than ideal choice.

From a realism perspective, it lacks any realistic effects beyond morale (Mugling is working to unfuck that), and it introduces a lot of logic flaws that counteract the realism gained by making it less realistic. See my current sig in a nutshell. If a “realistic” feature causes as many realism failures as it solves, AND it does not actually improve gameplay or game balance in any meaningful way, then you have fundamentally fucked up.

The other issue is that, unlike a lot of controversial recent features, it is (currently) the only one that is forced on players. Since it doesn’t add anything meaningful to the game at present, and doesn’t actually make things more realistic overall, the vitriol over this feature is ultimately understandable.

[Sheb]

I agree that it has a flavor of a WIP, but I think the vitriol is a bit much: it’s not really hindering the game.

[Random_dragon]

Perhaps. Understandable, if not excusable. How excusable it is depends on dev attitude when defending the features, or when vetoing alternative ways to handle it. How did Kevin handle initial opinions and feedback concerning the feature becoming always-on?

[FrankyPlaysGames]

This is a good thread.

Sorry to hear about developer conflicts, but regardless I’m happy with the path Cataclysm has walked, minus a few annoyances.

Magazines are awesome, 100 percent. The addition of pouches, ammo belts and even more holsters has been welcome now that melee has been nerfed with the stamina addition.

Boom cranes and jacks are logical to have, but I feel there should be more options for swapping out vehicle parts. I’m all for storing emergency kits in the trunk but, it is the future anyway, why can’t there be small ramps in garages that lift the car off the ground, come equipped with standard tools (jacks, wrenches, cranes and welders), and is linked to a console which can operate the machine? It can do things like repairs while still requiring fuel and batteries. Maybe it can even fit parts to the vehicle, bypassing your mechanics skill in substitute for computers?

Clothing I haven’t really dealt with as I craft my own clothes regularly. From what I hear, it sounds rather tedious but with further work (and perhaps making it optional) it can be a boon as well as a curse. Morale negatives aside, I like the idea of it influencing infection rate, but what if having smelly clothing made zombies track your scent more poorly?
What if actions influenced how quickly your clothes get dirty? A day of running around town scavenging, fixing up your deathwagon and eating spaghettios out of a can, sure, I’d imagine you’d be dirty at the end of it. A day reading, listening to music and boiling water you would still be pretty clean.
Does jumping into a river clean your clothes at all currently?

[Malaxxor]

Does jumping into a river clean your clothes at all currently?

Not that I know of, unfortunately. This is only a testament to the poor implementation of dirty clothes, however. I’m a really big fan of a more ‘believable’/‘realistic’ approach to Cata, but as others have already pointed out, this mechanic is seriously flawed.

That said, I think that quite a lot of ‘realistic’ mechanics can (and should!) be implemented in the game, but only if they have a gameplay reason to be there. Rivet and random_dragon already brought up a few read-worthy points about the dirty clothing mechanics and I wholeheartedly agree with them in that mechanics should have a reason to be included. Unfortunately, filthy clothing in its current state doesn’t have such a reason, as moral is a pretty negliable mechanic all by itself, so everything whose only effect is a change in morale is pretty much providing nothing to the game.

[Random_dragon]

Well, this is a clusterfuck. As with the idea of filthy clothing in general, it’s all in implementation. And currently the implementation, and fixing it, are all royally fucked at the moment.

There are three PRs at the moment affecting it. Coolthulhu has one that will shift the content to only existing in a mod, Mugling has one changing assorted code to make the feature suck less, and DangerNoodle is implementing an opposing trait to Squeamish.

I would assume that all three PRs might interfere with each other. This divided approach on how to implement it is what make the feature so pitiful to begin with, and now it’ll likely delay unfucking the feature further until all three of them sort that out.

[xironfistx]

id rather see rifling being a thing with improvised firearms than this whole dirty clothes clusterfuck.
how do the fuck a damm diver watch is dirty…
just put it under a stream of water to clean it,but noo…
you need soap,which is hard to find,expensive to make and really useless for anything else.

[Findulidas]

This is all assuming that the river is made out of decently clean water, in my experience they really arent. Likewise cleaning your clothes in just riverwater wont clean them, but make them dirty again. So naturally I think that argument is weak. The problem with cleaning is that as it is now it is just boring and didnt need to be added in the first place. Maybe the only statement I agreed with on OP’s post.

[Grandpuh_Ty]

[FrankyPlaysGames]

This is all assuming that the river is made out of decently clean water, in my experience they really arent. Likewise cleaning your clothes in just riverwater wont clean them, but make them dirty again. So naturally I think that argument is weak. The problem with cleaning is that as it is now it is just boring and didnt need to be added in the first place. Maybe the only statement I agreed with on OP’s post.

My mother washed her clothes in Guatemala using the river, and showered using a waterfall.
Granted, she had a washboard to scrub out stains in her clothes, but no soap. Again, that’s Guatemalan rivers as opposed to New England, but it’s not implausible. I don’t see how you’d get dirtier jumping in the river, swamps I can understand, but not rivers.

All-in-all though, yeah, cleaning clothes isn’t fun and provides almost no benefit at all.

[Taberone]

Filthy clothes aren’t too much as a bother as the majority of zombie clothing is things like torn up shirts and underwear, and zombie clothing always clutters the screen when I hit V to view all items around me and I have to cycle through several dozen clothes. With the (filthy) part being added to the clothes, I can filter out all of the clothing drops by zombies. Other realism nerfs aren’t too bothering since I’ve never gotten my characters far enough to witness things like boom cranes. The only realism nerf that bothers me so far is the fact that it takes several seconds to wield something if you don’t have a holster/shoulder strap/sheath/scabbard/etc, which often gets me killed or crippled. It doesn’t help that if you get attacked while equipping something, theres no “You were hurt! Stop equipping item? Y/N” prompt, unlike when you get hurt while butchering/waiting/reading.

[Sheb]

[quote=“Findulidas, post:50, topic:12504”]This is all assuming that the river is made out of decently clean water, in my experience they really arent. Likewise cleaning your clothes in just riverwater wont clean them, but make them dirty again. So naturally I think that argument is weak. The problem with cleaning is that as it is now it is just boring and didnt need to be added in the first place. Maybe the only statement I agreed with on OP’s post.

My mother washed her clothes in Guatemala using the river, and showered using a waterfall.
Granted, she had a washboard to scrub out stains in her clothes, but no soap. Again, that’s Guatemalan rivers as opposed to New England, but it’s not implausible. I don’t see how you’d get dirtier jumping in the river, swamps I can understand, but not rivers.

All-in-all though, yeah, cleaning clothes isn’t fun and provides almost no benefit at all.[/quote]

Well, in game at the moment filthy clothes aren’t simply dirty clothes, they’re the clothing of zombies that soaked for days in blood and rotten flesh.

[Random_dragon]

Filthy clothes aren’t too much as a bother as the majority of zombie clothing is things like torn up shirts and underwear

This is the main problem I have with the filthy clothes thing. The random damage, and general of decent drops, will already balance the player against bothering with zombie clothing.

A morale penalty is a pointless addition to that, and the hassle of cleaning it is disproportionately high compared to what you gain in doing so, especially compared to the effort needed to repair it versus the risk of losing the item entirely if you don’t fix it.

[FrankyPlaysGames]

When the addition of dirty and filthy clothes were first encountered by me very early on, I was actually kind of excited. I started crafting two pairs of clothing sets, since I assumed that (low skilled) combat and butchering would bloody up my body.
I actually moved all the dressers in the house to my main bedroom so I could organize them all into days for my regime, i.e take off my dirty clothes and put them in a wash area, then put on the entire set I left in the dresser, nice and clean.
Boy, was I disappointed.

[Beanzy]

As someone who started a game after not having played for months, this is my opinion on the new features.

1. Gun magazines: I think these are a good addition to the game. Different magazine sizes add a new dynamic to playing with firearms and make say, looting a STANAG drum magazine, add more excitement to searching for guns.

2. Book/recipe changes: A very welcome change; it’s great not having to reread a book unpteen times just to learn a specific recipe.

3. Jacks/Boom lift: I don’t like this change. While the scissor and bottle jack are relatively unobtrusive, the vehicle mounted lifts are a pain in the ass to use and just add needless busywork if you need to replace a tire on your deathmobile. I think a system based on mechanics skill, instead of tiers of jacks, should be the gateway that restricts creating op vehicles.

4. Filthiness: I don’t see what this is supposed to add to the game. IMO filthy clothes should just be abstracted as having less clothing drop from zombies (i.e. the player just naturally ignores ruined clothing), the fact that these clothes are already damaged and that tailoring is now harder than before should be barrier enough for using clothes dropped by zombies.

[Zilenan91]

I always just debug my strength to the required level to work on my car instead of using boom cranes because I don’t know how those things work.

Also filthiness is gone yay, now zombie clothes have an actual use.

[Wally-kun]

“Ruined” is a strong word. One that is highly, highly overused.

Filthy clothes and lifting limits for vehicles don’t “ruin” anything. They’re just annoying and get in the player’s way. Neither of which are a good thing.

But “ruined?” Quit being so dramatic.

[TheWumpus]

And to think I wanted to petition to make working on vehicles MORE complicated, requiring a vast array of specialty tools, take longer, have the risk of damage/failure if it’s right at your skill level, and implement even more parts (air compressors, air lines, transmissions, differentials, consumable fluids, etc). Sure glad I never got the draft of that off the ground. Of course there would time reductions for being very skilled, good lighting, smooth surfaces, and having access to air tools and wobbly sockets and a whole slew of the other 15 grand worth of shit I roll around the shop.

I guess I just want to share the !!FUN!! that comes with being a real mechanic. Maybe a mod…