Cataclysm: Dark Days Past [New game mode suggestion]

[detahramet]

One day, whilst playing as a hermit in the middle of a forest, whilst walking from my living cabin to my toilet cabin, the concept occurred to me:

Wouldn’t it be interesting to be able to turn off mobs entirely?
I mean we can change from current horde to classic zombies, so why not nothing at all?

No other creatures to run away from.
No other creatures to hunt.
Nothing to fear.
Nothing to love.
A world where you are completely, and utterly alone.

There would be no zombies, no bears, no squirrels, no slimes, nothing.
All that would feed you is that which you can forage and get non-perishables you can scrounge up.
All perishables would of course have to be long since rotted, and hellgates would have been closed for decades.

All there is, is you.

Surviving.

Alone.

[Nighthawk]

A tad dull, don’t you think?

[detahramet]

Eh, perhaps it would just be better off as a mod than anything else.
Perhaps hallucination could develop over time, becoming more and more intense as the lack of social interaction increased.
At the very least it would require at the very least Schizophrenia to be interesting

[Nighthawk]

Ooh. Now, I like the idea of man vs. his own mind. Add tons of extra stuff to schizophrenia and that may well be a very interesting game mode.

[Pakislav]

Honesly… Schizofrenia that creates hallucinations, somewhat like it is done in project zomboid would be an awesome addition to the game in current mode.

But removing all creatures is just completly and entirelly pointless beyond reason… what’s the point of hallucinogenic monsters if you know there aren’t really any?

[DeepEnd]

Why not - its not hard to implement and it could be a sandbox mode of one kind. You could for example create different constructions in peace and for example learn how to move effectively in the wilds and brace yourself for the cold and the acid rain.

Im usually dead before any of those things matters, so it would be interesting to try stuff out without pressure of dark grey C and brown s.

Game itself could become interesting when the mental aspects come more refined. Also this game mode could have different world generator making resources be more scarce the farther you venture from beginning, so it would become endurance / resource management / how far will I get type of thing where game success is measured by number of squares seen in the map.

[jumjummju]

To be honest, if you have a decent survival skill you can just camp in a forest and eat raw veggies for eternity, especially if near a swamp/river. The only thing you have to worry about is running out of lighter fuel, and even then you can just take the food poisoning like a man.

[Williham]

This is a good idea; maybe not so much for gameplay, but for debugging purposes and so forth.

[Pakislav]

Yeah… Cataclysm doesn’t really have that much sandboxy construction that would be anyhow interesting without the survival aspect.

And it’s already incredibly easy. Especially if you play with classic zombies. You can pretty much clear out a town right away with a rock.

[Survivalist]

I like the idea… what if the game is fun to play without zombies? Not forever, of course, but it’s got some pretty impressive survival related skills, etc, … why not have such a mode, and see if it’s fun? It might be as easy as putting a conditional return at the top of a function… (I haven’t looked at the code, so forgive me if that’s way off base…)

There’s already a couple special modes. Why not a survival mode? How about a “Crazy Hermit” mode with the copbots actually out to get you? As though you’ve set off a bank alarm in every town?

I guess I think if the game is fun to play even without zombies, it’ll always be fun to play.

[kevin.granade]

Yea, this will be pretty easy I think, so I’ll stick it on the list of things to do, but I can’t promise it’ll get prioritized.

[detahramet]

Would it be higher or lower priority than simply changing the few if then statements that cause my to undergo frostbite in 50 degree weather? If i knew C++ i’d be more than happy to do it myself, alas however, i am limited to my fledgling knowledge of basic, python, and javascript.

[Pakislav]

It could make sense if there were no towns, roads etc. and you had to hide from bears in caves that might be infested with bears.

But a pure sandbox? What’s the point, other then testing?

[The_Darkling_Wolf]

It’d be a nice basis for a Post Post Apocalypse mode once things are more fleshed out, where the risks come more from other survivors and a lack of supplies than being nom’d by zombies. Scavenging a box of Fancy Lad Snack Cakes is a massive windfall rather than it just being tossed in the food cellar.

[Reservoir]

Like the HL2 mod http://www.moddb.com/mods/attempt-to-survive ?

Yeah, that woulda be nice. Just surviving until you kill yourself or run out of food or your “I want to kill myself” bar fills up

[Slicer]

Instead of no enemies at all, why not have a few super-powerful, randomly-generated monstrosities (DF forgotten beasts) running around? Make them big, ugly, scary, very hard to kill, and very, very dangerous. Also, more temple-like areas, more traps, more pitfalls. And make the rewards for dealing with these things more, well, rewarding, like the only source of a vital resource (for example, gasoline, batteries, or lighter fluid). Right now, players might screw with nether beasts or the fault because it’s something to do and because they want artifacts which may or may not be a bad idea to pick up, but there’s not a lot of reason to do it.

The thing is, endlessly running from zombies or running them over in cars might be thrilling, but it gets old. We know what we’re going to face and how to deal with it. Removing generic “meh” not-really-challenges-anymore in favor of the genuinely unknown and scary is a good way to keep the empty feeling of a deserted world but still keep the player’s hackles raised.

[Pakislav]

If it’s not challenging to you Slicer you can always do what I did: Bump up spawn rates of Hulks and Brutes.

Shit’s scary now.