Building up a stockpile is a pretty big element of any survival game. That just forces characters into nomadic lifestyles, and cripples no-cities mode again. The survival aspect isn’t pointless, but water as a basic resource really shouldn’t be an issue after the earliest part of the game.
Yes, I completely agree.
By tainting water in such a way, you give any character that cannot purify tainted water a finite time limit, limited not by any fault of the player, but by the whims of the game. 8 weeks is not much time at all to get your water, and no matter how much water you stockpile, eventually a character will be completely unable to survive.
If you’re going to go after some aspects of survival, think about going after food before you attack water.
Hey, lots of well thought points here!
To the discussion between making monsters tougher or survival (that is food and water) harder: I really think both should be getting more difficult to some degree as the game progresses. While hunger/thirst are not the main focus of the game, I don’t think we should allow this aspect to become trivial and meaningless. Ideally you would have to find creative new ways to get food with the things you have or have to make risk/gain evaluations later in the game. Making some truly dangerous heist to get weeks worth of food (so you don’t have to worry about it for some time) would make acquiring food meaningful and (most importantly) without tedium.
I agree that the no-city challenge should still be a viable option even late in the game. There would have to be some alternative to getting that high-tech filtering equipment. Alternatives could be hunting triffids (high survival allows you butchering for the buds), acquiring some rare mutation/cbm, etc. There should always be more then one way do it, repeating stuff is no fun!
While I see your point I don’t think this would be the way to go. The player wouldn’t get any feedback as to why the same harmless zombies from 10 weeks ago are now killing machines all of the sudden. There is no real sense of progression…
I share your opinions to some degree: I personally hate being a nomad within the game (I love building an awesome base), but like I said above: Survival itself should still be a factor. Correctly implemented (without making it a chore) it prevents a perfectly good and quite large chunk of the game from being wasted.
Please excuse the double post.
Well you can grow your own food, you know. You only have to live nomadic if you can’t get the resources close by.
Water really is quite essential and perhaps you are right when you say that it should pose no issue later in the game. However, when quenching thirst becomes a no-issue, drinking becomes a simple chore. Why waste a perfectly good mechanic like that?
[quote=“dwarfkoala, post:22, topic:4434”]Yes, I completely agree.
By tainting water in such a way, you give any character that cannot purify tainted water a finite time limit, limited not by any fault of the player, but by the whims of the game. 8 weeks is not much time at all to get your water, and no matter how much water you stockpile, eventually a character will be completely unable to survive.
If you’re going to go after some aspects of survival, think about going after food before you attack water.[/quote]
Thats the worst case scenario when it comes to the implementation, hopefully nothing that horrible will get implemented. There should be plenty of time and lots of warning signs, overall a gradual process.
It was my impression those 8 weeks where simply used as an example, not the actual number. Obviously it would make most sense to make that a modifiable world option.
I agree, food is definitely the first step to go. While this thread quickly moved to the more detailed side of things (which is perfectly fine), it was actually meant to find out if players agree with the general idea of difficulty progression by time. Therefor whats discussed here doesn’t mean I am going to implement it immediately (not going to start this week in any case, too much work).
I usually don’t like to throw myself into this kind of discussions, but what if we make the game a bit more… exploration based?
So, the points are:
You want to make the game harder as the player progresses.
You want to make the survival aspect of the game more noticeable.
You don’t want to make the hard gameplay come with time.
We only have a way out of this. It is not nerfing the actual items and stuff. Water is ok as it is. If you read the lore, you could get that it is not actually going to change. Or at least that is what i think.
I have a suggestion: Triggers.
Events that trigger things.
My principal suggestion is lore-based. If you don’t know a lot about the lore, it may spoiler everything a bit.
The thing is that in the labs there is supposed to be portals. Like the portals that sometimes spawn in the middle of the place. I have the idea of a huge underground place, the final room of special labs, that have a really big machine with a command interface. You enter there, and activate, before hacking it. A portal appears.
We now have the World Creator. What it means? It means we can have multiple worlds in the same game folder. Cool. What about, with activating that portal, triggering series of events that conduce to… Level 2.
In Level 1, the Earth, portals start to appear. Weak NetherCreatures start to spawn. Hell on Earth. The thing is to not make the game more survivor oriented, but to add better ceratures. Different things. All corresponding to the Lore, of course.
In Level 2 (the one you opened, the one you enter in the portal) is totally different. Is the Nether. No grass. Red rock is your dirt. Lava everywhere. Cities? I think they are some kind of Nether villages with creatures living in them, aggresive to you. No place to hide. It is very hot, you can’t carry much clother, or you will burn alive. It is really dark, all time You can see just 5 tiles in front of you. The Nether has food and water. The water is not good. The animals have to be distainted, like the zombies. There are, sometimes, portals to come back. Giant creatures without eyes follow your essence everywhere. Lots of artifacts. Lots of temples. All is red as lava. Doom on Cataclysm.
As you go, you go deeper in the Hell, activating different portals or maybe going trough caves that go deeper in Hell, different levels. You could have End Game content. You could have better weapons. As you go, you find more temples, at a point where you can see some kind of civilization in there, that does not like you. Places like the labs, where you can see notes and stuff that tell you a bit more of Lore. Say hi to the Devil from me.
What do you think? It may need a thread on its own.
Agreed, but it should be a hard fought for stockpile which isn’t as infinite as it is now. As Uneron pointed out, a daring trip into the supermarket to survive for another week is quantifiably more fun than just collecting beans from houses. You wouldn’t be needing to go out and do it everyday, but you’d have to actually think about it now and then instead of just mindlessly pick up MREs and meat soups when you can be bothered.
No-cities mode can easily be special cased to not have water contamination so that is a non-issue.
8 weeks was admittedly far too short (I just pulled it out of thin air), probably we’re talking of more like 6 months instead, and it’d only be fair to give the player some warning (‘this water is becoming more contaminated, it looks a lot worse than it did a week ago, but it’s still vaguely drinkable’)
I personally think that making a super purifier would make for a great mid/late game goal (lets say it required some pretty good components and a lot of skills). With the upcoming mission list there could easily be a long term mission of ‘find a way to deal with the gradually more contaminated water’ and once you acquired a purifier/mutation/CBM then you’d get a big boost - a simple enough idea, but it’d be a nice small quest till much bigger things come along.
StopSignal: ah, yeah, I think that needs a separate thread.
I feel like a lot of the trouble with supplies being too common is because you are the only person in the apocalypse, currently, and if we get NPCs looting and raiding supplies will dry up a lot faster, and looting will be a lot more dangerous.
Agree, when working NPC (NPC that behave similar to the player - looting) is in, the balance scale will chance dramatically. Now the resources are no longer your to take, you will have to compete/steal/trade for it.
I’m going to post a github ticket outlining what we want on this front, compiled from various other threads and tickets. I’ll post it here when it’s finished.
At least wood will be in abundance. I mean, will an NPC go up to a chair and smash it for wood?
I hope not…
That is another point, some factions will just want you to turn in a bunch of foodstuffs for quests, and with that happening it would be reasonable to have lootable items decay over time as well, assuming other survivors are getting them.
In that case the difficulty would ramp up if you decided to support a faction, because if they’re more successful they’ll be consuming more supplies…
[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:31, topic:4434”]That is another point, some factions will just want you to turn in a bunch of foodstuffs for quests, and with that happening it would be reasonable to have lootable items decay over time as well, assuming other survivors are getting them.
In that case the difficulty would ramp up if you decided to support a faction, because if they’re more successful they’ll be consuming more supplies…[/quote]
I could also see denial tactics being used by opposing factions - ie, settlers burning towns to force out raiders because of lack of food supplies available, or the same thing happening to any faction, or luring hordes into areas. Of course, none of this will be in the game for a long time, but it’s good to think about how the whole system should work eventually.
@Ninja123
Ideally, the NPC should behave like a player-controlled character in basic survival aspect. These things include:
Looting in houses.
Hunting and maybe Fishing.
Obtain water through either bottled water or river/toiletl
Find clothes to achieve a minimum warmth.
Make fire (without burning the shelter down)
Cook food and make clean water
Gather material for some basic crafting
And maybe more
Since we are not directly control them, most of the task the NPC perform can be “omitted” (make the NPC perform those task out of view) and simplify them. The presence of a NPC should still affect the environment round it however.
I’ve outlined some of the more generally agreed upon and hoped for bits. Suggestions on what to add and further feedback appreciated.
Kewl. So I would find splitered wood everywhere…
Nah JK. Just wantdd to bring up a point on what the NPCs will use as crafted weapons? Will they use the melee craftable weapons or will be using coil guns and the such?
Will there be an option to join a monster faction, through mutation or other means, similar to the netherum ally transformation you mentioned in the other thread?
[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:31, topic:4434”]That is another point, some factions will just want you to turn in a bunch of foodstuffs for quests, and with that happening it would be reasonable to have lootable items decay over time as well, assuming other survivors are getting them.
In that case the difficulty would ramp up if you decided to support a faction, because if they’re more successful they’ll be consuming more supplies…[/quote]
NPCs taking things is one matter. Magic looting faeries are another. If something’s gone, I want to know why, where it is now, and possibly go reclaim it. (Especially if the something was inside my base.)
[quote=“GlyphGryph, post:34, topic:4434”]https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/4977
I’ve outlined some of the more generally agreed upon and hoped for bits. Suggestions on what to add and further feedback appreciated.[/quote]
A few thoughts:
-
Zones/cities full of mostly one particular type of Zombies (like a brute zone and a splitter zone) would probably need a big overhaul on the zombie/Zombie AI side or it’d make it so that some character types would walk over certain areas and have to completely keep away from others due to their play style. The problem isn’t so much that there shouldn’t be varying difficulty, it’s just that in past experience it’d become MUCH easier for some characters and MUCH harder for others - I base that on the many, many years of balance it took to get DCSS branches to not be ridiculously easy for some chars. and impossible for others. A mix is probably best most of the time, although it could be weighted due to building types.
-
I really do feel that a simpler mechanic for keeping up the spawn numbers/increasing challenge could be done.
As discussed before, each area/zone/city could have a set ‘zombie’ number depending on buildings/other factors in that zone, for all the zombies killed, they respawn up to this number, whilst loud noises and time (and probably other factors such as faction location) increase the base number. As time goes on, the respawned zombies are weighted towards special ones (and the timestamp on the initial spawns to mutate them could still stay).
This seems more natural and less as though you could try and game it to keep the ‘immune response’ from kicking in. The immune response also seems a bit too intelligent for zombies, although would be a great mechanic for factions/other monsters.
[quote=“Binky, post:38, topic:4434”]A few thoughts:
- Zones/cities full of mostly one particular type of Zombies (like a brute zone and a splitter zone) would probably need a big overhaul on the zombie/Zombie AI side or it’d make it so that some character types would walk over certain areas and have to completely keep away from others due to their play style. The problem isn’t so much that there shouldn’t be varying difficulty, it’s just that in past experience it’d become MUCH easier for some characters and MUCH harder for others - I base that on the many, many years of balance it took to get DCSS branches to not be ridiculously easy for some chars. and impossible for others. A mix is probably best most of the time, although it could be weighted due to building types.[/quote]
I’m not sure if you followe dthe link to the forum thread about the special zombie types, what GlyphGryph is referencing is “extra special” zombies that would be produced by some event, like a portal opening nearby. It wouldn’t change over all the zombies, in fact it would only change a small minority if I understand the proposal correctly.
[quote=“Binky, post:38, topic:4434”]- I really do feel that a simpler mechanic for keeping up the spawn numbers/increasing challenge could be done.
As discussed before, each area/zone/city could have a set ‘zombie’ number depending on buildings/other factors in that zone, for all the zombies killed, they respawn up to this number, whilst loud noises and time (and probably other factors such as faction location) increase the base number. As time goes on, the respawned zombies are weighted towards special ones (and the timestamp on the initial spawns to mutate them could still stay).
This seems more natural and less as though you could try and game it to keep the ‘immune response’ from kicking in. The immune response also seems a bit too intelligent for zombies, although would be a great mechanic for factions/other monsters.[/quote]
The problem with that is where are the “offscreen” zombies in the population before they spawn? It just grates to me that you would completely clear an area, but then more zombies would appear out of nowhere. The solution to this is to give those new zombies a source, another city, “somewhere over there”, or even something like a FEMA camp, which if it has charnel pits could reasonably be a long-term source of new bodies. Similarly some event could trigger a break-out from an enclosed population center like a prison.
I like the ideas. Anything that increases difficulty is a plus, and anything that adds goals to the game (both short term, and long term) would go a long way.
“Oh god, I have to do something about that unexploded nuke in the crater in town, its mutating things into spitters”
“I’ve seen a lot of specials zombies in the woods over there, I wonder what is going on”
Roguelikes need that always-pushing-you feeling.