Bring the survival back with progressive difficulty

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

[size=18pt]Intro[/size] (can skip this)
After reading a bunch of suggestion threads concerned with balancing and survival, I found there were a lot of people arguing that it is already quite difficult and an equal number that it is not nearly difficult enough. After giving it some thought I think that both statements are quite true. Let me elaborate.

While most roquelikes and roquelike-likes are known for their difficulty, they are still quite accessible, even for complete beginners (again, not all, DF is anything but accessible to beginners). It is quite easy to clear the first few floors in Nethack, get through a few starsystems in FTL or get to the first boss in The Binding of Isaac, but no one would call these easy games. That is because they possess progressive difficulty, the challenge rises as the player progresses.

Progressive difficulty is what Cataclysm lacks. Starting out as a new player with a new character is extremely challenging, but once you’ve grasped the basics and acquired the equipment you need, survival and all other dangers become trivial. This makes balancing very hard, since a global increase in difficulty (say by introducing Zombiewolfs) would mostly affect the already plenty challenging beginning. Its of course not trivial to make the game progress in what is essentially a Sandbox: The player is not forced to go anywhere, must not go down level after level and the alternative of an arbitary increase in difficulty is not desirable (oh, the player has a shotgun? better spawn more Zombears then!).

[size=18pt]The Idea[/size]
I am in no way the first one to notice all this, but I think I have an answer (or at least idea) to that problem nevertheless: Why not make the games difficulty progress over time? Making the game more difficulty the more ingame time passes would allow for a comparable difficulty progression like in the games mentioned above: New characters (often being played by new players) have it relatively simple whereas old characters have huge challenges to conquer. It is already implemented to some degree: food spoils, more mutated insects appear, etc. Unfortunately it is not enough as of now, as experienced characters are still invulnerable.

It would fit in the setting too! The ever growing number of fungaloids/triffids could make new fungal spires/hearts, Zombies mutate into more and more inhuman shapes, natural wildlife goes extinct replaced completely by mutation equivalents (no longer normal wolves only giant ones that glow in the dark), all the hazardous materials dumped everywhere wreck havoc with the athmosphere resulting in more severe winters (Winter is coming!), the robots become self aware, bees grow to even larger size, portals open all over the place releasing monsters, sewer rats grow intelligent enough to steal loot from cities, etc. There is a lot of fun that could be had with this. You didn’t think all the slime and fungal would be staying idle, did you?

Ideally that feeling of utter boredom of having a character survive for more then 2 years would get replaced by one of accomplishment. Against all odds you somehow managed to survive hell on earth. Bravo! All of this without making things even more difficult for new players. You would also finally have some reason other than sheer paranoia to stockpile the ridiculously large piles of weapons, ammo and food. They are simply for bad times to come, or should we say for Dark Days Ahead?

Naturally there should be an options for the exact time-scale with the possibility to turn it off completely. You don’t necessarily want challenge when you are busy making an drivable fortress of utter DOOM ™ the size of a Death Star, or when you are busy testing stuff out.

Should enough people agree with this sort of thing (or the idea in general at least) then I would try making a pull request on github to implement at least a framework in the time around christmas (the most boring time of the year). Obviously this would be a serious change in game balance, therefor it should be discussed extensively (and could lead to some hot debates). Just please try to stay civil about it.

~Cheers
Uneron

2

…Sounds impressive and a lot of this has already been suggested and I’m not sure how much of it is “planned”

But I’ll be impressed if you can pull off what you claim you can.

3

Good post. If you look at the modding sub-forum we’ve been discussing a ‘hardcore mod’ (in Clayton’s post about mod ideas). However, a boost in difficulty over time is what is really needed, it’s just a lot harder to implement than a straight difficulty boost. Anything that causes difficulty over time shouldn’t really need to be optioned (and it might be difficult to do so) as most people expect games to get harder.

I think having a lot less food that keeps, contaminating rivers over time/stopping there being an infinite amount of water in toilets and killing off and zombifying the wildlife slowly over time would be great starting points. Possibly you could do some small changes that could get pulled into main branch quickly? It’d also help get more people on board with the idea.

I’d recommend you to start with killing off the small wildlife (and zombifying the bigger stuff) over time as I can’t see that not being desirable, and it’d mean at the beginning players have an abundance of food whereas later they have to compete with more zombie wolves and no easy meat which is a gentle curve (as preserved food is still so available) and would definitely give a sense of progression.

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[quote=“EkarusRyndren, post:2, topic:4434”]…Sounds impressive and a lot of this has already been suggested and I’m not sure how much of it is “planned”

But I’ll be impressed if you can pull off what you claim you can.[/quote]
As much as I would love to claim otherwise: thats not going to happen :slight_smile: I simply want to implement a few of the things discussed here, perhaps lay a couple of general frameworks for it. That would be it for now. Nothing too grand, but still.

[quote=“Binky, post:3, topic:4434”]Good post. If you look at the modding sub-forum we’ve been discussing a ‘hardcore mod’ (in Clayton’s post about mod ideas). However, a boost in difficulty over time is what is really needed, it’s just a lot harder to implement than a straight difficulty boost. Anything that causes difficulty over time shouldn’t really need to be optioned (and it might be difficult to do so) as most people expect games to get harder.

I think having a lot less food that keeps, contaminating rivers over time/stopping there being an infinite amount of water in toilets and killing off and zombifying the wildlife slowly over time would be great starting points. Possibly you could do some small changes that could get pulled into main branch quickly? It’d also help get more people on board with the idea.

I’d recommend you to start with killing off the small wildlife (and zombifying the bigger stuff) over time as I can’t see that not being desirable, and it’d mean at the beginning players have an abundance of food whereas later they have to compete with more zombie wolves and no easy meat which is a gentle curve (as preserved food is still so available) and would definitely give a sense of progression.[/quote]
Thanks! Its funny that you should mention the river pollution, since that was one of the things that came to my mind as well :slight_smile: Unfortunately I think it would be rather difficult to do on the technical side of things.

The wildlife seems indeed like a good starting point, since some work into that direction has already been done there.

I will look the ‘hardcore mod’ up, but I still think difficulty over time is the way to go.

5

I’m not sure how the overmap system works, but if it’s possible to change them mid-game then you could just do it in say four stages every 14 times the player goes to sleep, with each stage changing it to a more and more green looking river.

If that’s not possible, you could just put in something that makes all ‘raw water’ (as it’s called in the code I think) get more contaminated over time, so that by week 8 all water is undrinkable without heating/cleaning, you could then put something in that makes all shallow/deep water (which is just used in rivers I think) not be able to be fully cleaned (maybe a 50/50 chance) after week 12. I don’t think that would be too hard to do really.

Page on poison here:
http://www.wiki.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?title=Poison

6

I agree with you, AFAIK progressive difficulty is planned, to what degree I don’t know but definitely planned. One thing on top of my head is GlyphGryph’s idea of “zombie evolution” - I don’t quite recall the exact name but the idea is the zombie population will get stronger over time, and then there are plans for wandering horde of zombie, animals turn into zom-animals. Once NPC is in they should give plenty of challenges too.

7

Yeah it’s definitely planned from what I’ve read, and after all the kickstarter things are fulfilled I’m sure we’ll see more attention to balance and stuff, but I’m sure there is no harm (in fact I’m sure quite the opposite!) in starting early if you can. There are plenty of small things which I’m sure could help towards this, so there’s no need to go too big with your vision.

A quick one which would help enormously would be to make non-perishable food a lot more rare (I’m talking like a can of beans for every 10 houses) and tone down the non-dangerous animal spawning. Perishable food could take the place of the non-perishable stuff so that there would still be a lot of food for beginners (and would still make things look realistically stocked up, even if a bit skewed towards fresh produce) but mean that there would be a bit of a curve.

This is pretty much just editing a few .json files, so I’m sure you could tackle this easily and then submit it - no one can possibly complain about this making it too difficult for beginners, so you won’t have to deal with that.

8

I’m just starting a project to try and add more powerful zombies that only spawn later in the game, so that clearing out zombies becomes progressively harder as you go on, although I haven’t added anything functional yet.

9

Lovecraft’s writings ought to become reality as time goes on, shoggoths and starspawn crawling from between the fabric of what is life and what is fiction.

That’d be progressive.

10

Its great to hear that there are plans already! :smiley: Sounds like my ideas are not far off then!

[quote=“Binky, post:5, topic:4434”]I’m not sure how the overmap system works, but if it’s possible to change them mid-game then you could just do it in say four stages every 14 times the player goes to sleep, with each stage changing it to a more and more green looking river.

If that’s not possible, you could just put in something that makes all ‘raw water’ (as it’s called in the code I think) get more contaminated over time, so that by week 8 all water is undrinkable without heating/cleaning, you could then put something in that makes all shallow/deep water (which is just used in rivers I think) not be able to be fully cleaned (maybe a 50/50 chance) after week 12. I don’t think that would be too hard to do really.[/quote]
I envisioned the water to be contaminated with the ever-present slime (or rather the mutated microorganisms swimming in it I suppose) rendering the water so undrinkable that it requires some special procedure/equipment to make it clean (as the strains are heat resistant, you see). But thats just a thought really and not the first thing I would start with.

Haven’t looked into the overmap yet either, so I can’t say for certain how difficult it is. Will take a look when I have the time.

[quote=“Binky, post:7, topic:4434”]A quick one which would help enormously would be to make non-perishable food a lot more rare (I’m talking like a can of beans for every 10 houses) and tone down the non-dangerous animal spawning. Perishable food could take the place of the non-perishable stuff so that there would still be a lot of food for beginners (and would still make things look realistically stocked up, even if a bit skewed towards fresh produce) but mean that there would be a bit of a curve.

This is pretty much just editing a few .json files, so I’m sure you could tackle this easily and then submit it - no one can possibly complain about this making it too difficult for beginners, so you won’t have to deal with that.[/quote]
I agree on the non-perishable food thing. Although an alternative would be to make most food (including can of beans) perish at some point. Disregarding reality somewhat (or one could easily explain away with some new fungus/bacteria) even canned foot lasts only a year or two. If you want more you have to make it yourself. Only a few precious things should last eternally (military food). The advantage would be that when food becomes precious later on in the game you could not just go into the next city and expect to find still edible stuff everywhere. Again, just an idea.

11

I think if you’re going to work on progressive difficulty over time, you should look at increasing tougher enemies rather than focusing on making food and water harder to find. Because after the early game, sustainable food and water doesn’t become much of an issue. If you focus entirely on making food and water difficult to find in every stage it kind of hurts the sense of progression.

Also don’t forget that some people like playing on no-cities mode, with nothing but the endless wilds. Those people probably won’t have access to the advanced purifying equipment you suggest, and your proposal would make no-cities outright unplayable.

12

I think one easy step would be to not spawn rotten foods on day 1. Those puddings, fruit juices, and meat sandwiches make a big difference to players who start with addictions (and I guess players in general), and if they are mostly gone after the first week there should be no problems with game balance.

I think that having burgers and orange juice in fridges to start, reducing wildlife spawns over time, and increasing amount of hostiles over time would be the right place to start.

NOTE: I play exclusively with 0.5 loot spawns, 1.5 zombie spawns, and all my characters are 6 pt build Junkies.

13

Another point of balance would be mobile bases vs stationary bases. I think having the corruption of the world tied to a specific thing, like a netherworld portal or fungal growth, works better than simply a function of time. Ideally both a sedentary and nomadic lifestyle should be possible, with neither having a clear advantage over the other.

14

I think a lot of that is because food is so ridiculously abundant now and sustainable food so easy to create (out of wildlife and stuff). If food and water was a lot more scarce in all forms (after the early game) it would require you to explore constantly to survive rather than just because you fancy a bit more loot/to tackle more zombies.
Obviously, as you progress through the game you’ll find MREs and the like which will add to the sense of progression and allow you to spend a lot less time searching for food, but I think it would be a lot more fun if you never felt completely stocked up enough and had to make hard choices about either getting that engine for your escape vehicle and possibly starving or getting the food and not having any way to escape.

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This isn’t Don’t Starve, I don’t think that a constant struggle for food and water should be a driving force in the game. Plus, it kind of goes against the point of having farming implemented in the game. I don’t think a character should be forced into a nomadic lifestyle. And I get the feeling this will result mostly in players stockpiling clean water/meat as much as possible in the early game over anything else. Increasing hostiles makes more sense, then it becomes an issue of ammo/weaponry which is a higher-tier resource than food/water.

16

Regarding monsters, the plan is to have monsters (zombies at least) mutate into more dangerous forms over time. Once the framework for this is in place, we can make only vanilla types spawn at the start of the game and crank up the numbers somewhat (leaving it adjustable though), then as the game progresses more and more of the monsters you encounter will be very dangerous versions, years into the game nearly every zombie might be a special. This rate of change will almost certainly be adjustable.
For monsters other than zombies that reproduce, they might simply increase in number, but we’ll have the framework to have them change into more dangerous forms too.

For supplies, I think this is really an issue where morale/mood would provide the solution. All those non-perishables will keep you alive, but won’t be contributing much if anything to keeping your morale up. It’s a central tennent of the post-apocalyptic genre that there are plenty of supplies to scavenge, so I’m not particularly in favor of reducing the quantity of food spawned in order to increase difficulty. However, there is an option you can use to scale back spawn rate in general if you want to make things harder.

17

I’m not saying that food/drink should be the central goal (Like in Don’t Starve), but I think it should be a factor with some meaning, unlike currently where after you’ve raided your first 4-5 houses you’re good to go for weeks. I think this is what causes the tedium - an easy task which has little meaning. Making it slightly more important and more difficult adds a challenge as it makes you either invest time in farming (and have to hope the weather is good and stuff when that’s implemented) or spend time hunting in potentially dangerous environments. Obviously after you raise your skills you’ll be able to one/two shot the deer, and farm better stuff, so you would eventually over come the problem but it wouldn’t be ‘get 10x meat soup and squirrels and never worry about food again’

Morale/mood would help a lot with this obviously, especially if non-perishables gave negative morale. I could go ahead and shift all of the ‘fun’ ratings in the comestible.json a bit if that’d help, unless you wanted to make it processed/non-perishable an attribute which so that it could be changed at a base level?

18

There was some similar discussion of this when I suggested revamping the dynamic spawn rules to change it from “sound creates zombies” to “zombies respawn over time”. The end idea is more along the lines of “make zombies get tougher over time instead of constantly introducing new ones” - that is, your generic green Z will eventually have more HP, hit more often, and do more damage. That way the game can, if tweaked properly, scale indefinitely, which isn’t necessarily true when we just add more monsters.

I like the idea of poisoning water over time, though. It feels like there’s a big division between the first week and later weeks because of food rotting; the game could do with more notable divisions in the world-state that you have to plan for.

19

I think it’d be better if it was tied to an actual thing, like a netherworld portal that opened upstream, rather than simply a function of time, so you could close it if you were equipped to do so. Otherwise in an ordinary game you’d simply spend most of the early-game stockpiling jerrycans of clean water, and no-cities mode would be unplayable after that point, as you wouldn’t have the fancy technology needed to purify corrupted water.

20

Agreed, static spawn has been discussed in great detail and I think the general consensus has been that they should respawn over time instead of immediately due to sound, but that sound would cause more to respawn over time. However, it just needs for someone with knowledge and time to actually do it, and I think most of the main devs are too tied up with kickstarter stuff. I definitely agree that there need to be more ‘world events’ or progress in the game world, I think it would be absolutely incredible if you started off in a pretty normal world but after 4 years of in game time it became a complete wasteland - something like that just hasn’t been attempted in a game before.

I think it can be both - the world can get harsher and events can make it even worse. I’d assume that it’d take quite a while for water to be completely contaminated (8 weeks for instance) and stockpiling could be discouraged by having standing water go off (which it does, especially in non-ideal environments). Granted, it would require a lot of balancing, but it’d be a lot better than the survival aspect being completely pointless.