So one of the main complaints people have had recently has to do with the (very subjective) level of tedium involved in gameplay. I don’t wanna speak on that issue, I sort of just go with the notion that there’s a trade off in everything, and try to tailor the game/my playstyle to have the most subjectively enjoyable experience. And since roguelikes are already a pretty niche area, and since Cata:DDA fills a pretty distinct niche of that niche, and since there seems to be a growing niche of cata players who seem to be finding the game less fun, I thought I’d share my most recent method of play in the hopes that like-minded others may try it and take a liking to it as well.
To start, I’ll say that I think the recent development of cata has shifted into more of a “human survival under apocalypse conditions” simulator, as opposed to a “create a space marine and obliterate the world around you until you accidentally drive over a minefield or have a safe-mode accident and get eaten by a bear” simulator. The latter is still very possible, but I think some of the backlash has been towards the increased number of things you have to do in order to reach that stage, which in turn has led to complaints of tedious gameplay.
Now, I don’t have a problem with the new vehicle construction constraints or the addition of magazines and civvy-appropriate weapons in civvy places or the nutrition system, but what I do have a problem with is maintaining continuity between play sessions. I often forget what the hell I was doing if I leave a character in virtual limbo for more than a few days or so without loading 'em back up, and I think this aspect was a lot easier to manage before some of the more recent additions. I began to do things like bring a gun out and forget the magazine. Or I’d forget when the last time I had fruit was and get scurvy. Or I’d lose a tire and find a viable replacement, only to remember I needed to do a half dozen other things before I could obtain it. THIS was the part that made the game less fun for me. Not the added features, but the fact that I had developed habits and propensities that just don’t work anymore with the number of new and complex additions.
Finally, onto the important part. As this began happening more regularly, I found myself being less drawn to play the game than I was when I could just load it up and get right back into the swing of things. So when my last character died, I though about ways to streamline the game in its current state with its current features, and during this internal dialogue I had a bit of an epiphany: it’s not the added features that make the game too complex, it’s finding a balance between the survival based tasks and the combat based tasks. When this game was a bit simpler, cutting down loads of zeds and butchering their corpses was like 70% of the fun to me. But there’s a bit more rigidity to the game now. Even though this is as non-linear a game as possible, compared to previous versions you just end up having a ton more goal-oriented things to do than “I want to raid every gun store in the surrounding 8 towns because guns are cool” type things.
So, yadda yadda yadda, yeah I typed a ton, sorry, what I finally settled on was trying to make zombie encounters more intense and engaging, but much fewer and farther between, in order to aid continuity between tasks not related to killing every enemy in a certain radius. And I’ve been having a TON of fun with it. I put cities on size 10, distance between cities at 1, monster spawn on 0.3, random NPC spawn at 10, and in the mods I’m using Fast Zombies, Tough Zombies, and No Zombie Revivification. This has made encounters with zombies MUCH more intense, MUCH less predictable, and MUCH less of a time-consuming task. The city size and distance means that there are still zombies around, especially if you make too much noise, and the NPC factor just adds a little flavor, as I tend not to take them as followers since they just constantly complain but you never really know what they’re gonna do unless you do recruit them. City size 10 also means that everything you’d immediately need is in a pretty short distance, making the start of every game completely different from the last, whereas I used to create a character based on a template, grind the same skills, do the same shit in the same order. Hordes with these settings are also very anxiety inducing. They’re very fast, so you have to make decisions very quickly, but they are dispatchable and then you can go back to what you were doing beforehand without a prolonged encounter.
I think in general these settings add a lot of variety to the game. You get to experience different things every time, instead of always giving yourself the same goals and completing them in the same style you always do. It also allows you to get acquainted with all the new stuff at a different pace. Overall, it’s just a totally different way to play the game, and I urge anyone who is starting to find the gameplay tedious or stale to try it out and tailor this setting group to fit your own style.
