Got an idea which has probably been considered before, but I figured i’d throw in my own input or at least contribute to it if it exists.
So I had an Idea to make things more interesting for survivors. For survivors that have their deathmachine’s and uber warriors of the wastes.
The system works as this. After the first four Seasons have past (Spring, Summer, Fall & Winter, or sooner if you prefer), there is a chance, perhaps around 5-15% that a the season turns “Cataclysmic” Meaning that every day which passes carries a new extreme. Whether that be Intense Heat, Numbing Cold, Raining Acid, Raining Blood, Trees turning to Triffids, Portals to Eldritch Hells opening randomly across the wasteland, natural wildlife going insane to the point it goes rabid or kills itself.
The ideas here are endless of what you could generate, but essentially it randomly creates a “Hard Mode” over the period of one season where everything just goes crazy and random and reality is not what it seems. And once that season’s over with, everything resumes as per regular programming and you can pat yourself on the back that you survived.
Just a thought for those that end up feeling like the game becomes too easy once they get to a certain stage of progression.
And naturally if people so deem it necessary, they should be able to turn it off if they feel its too easy…
Reminds me of DF…spend the first year getting ready for FUN, then watch it all fall apart. As long as its an optional component, and I’m not required to be involved with its creation, I say the more the merrier. I love options.
Also, this might motivate people to play with longer seasonal lengths, in order to get more prep time.
Not sure about the idea as initially described, but I do like the idea of seasons gradually getting weirder after a year-ish. Maybe not so on/off ish by season.
I like the idea of raining blood, psychopaths would love it. And although acid rain is a bitch, I’d like it to be bought back into the game somehow because !FUN!
I’d love if the world slowly decayed into madness, it’d make things interesting, especially if I had to adapt my vehicle to keep it moving… XD
On a related note, increasing the length of seasons, I’ve noticed, tends to make the game /a lot/ easier. Mainly because it slows the spawning of things like Antlered Horrors. Plus, you can do what’d normally take “a year” in the better part of a month. (At the extreme end of the spectrum of course)
I’d love any form of hard mode that doesn’t rely on just bumping the numbers (fast zombies eventually get boring).
Though I’d prefer it to be constant hard mode dependent on the world rather than random period of hard mode.
Extreme temperatures sound cool. Currently the 14 days per season makes it very easy to prepare for winter. Summer is harder, but it’s relatively mild most of the time.
Portals to hell would have to be “done right”. No spawning monsters in the basement, but instead an invasion of “mi-go hulks” blocking off the road, nether summoner monsters etc.
Blood rain causing big morale hit (100, not 30) would make rain meaningful.
But, y’know, it’s gotta be said. I’m a bit iffy on the season suggestion per se because there’s a part of me that’s like “Cataclysm season? Every season is Cataclysm season!” That said, the whole time-gating of increased world difficulty after like a year sounds about right. By that point most players will probably be ready for it. I don’t think it needs to be on a random “this season is going to be unusually crazy” basis, though–just, “the overworld difficulty ramps up in a timeframe that makes the late game a bit more exciting.” I think the devs are actually leaning towards that themselves, with goals like hordes becoming part of the standard game and spawn pools for other monsters increasing over time.
(On other topics floated by Coolthulhu: “netherworld invasion” map extras would be pretty cool; two weeks is a bit too short of seasons IMO and I bump it up to 30 days these days; what really makes winter easier is installing a Recycler Unit CBM and then being bummed that god dammit you just made a survivor mess kit and grabbed a minifridge and shit and now you hardly even need them because you hardly fucking eat; what’s wrong with vegetables that deliver themselves to you? except maybe for the part where it’s all what the hell am I going to do with all this plant marrow do I even eat anymore)
AFAIK the plans going forwards with more cataclysmic weather types is to link them to nearby portals and other overmap stuff. So for example you might start to get acid rain popping up if you are within X overmap tiles of a acid-belching portal, or have heat/cold slowly creep up/down as you get closer to ice or fire portals (which is sorta what happens in ice labs), or suffer from the occasional fungal spores rain if you have too many fungal spires near you, that sort of stuff.
Also, if you find seasons not challenging enough feel free to crank their duration up. Personally I’m a big believer in realistic 90 day seasons.
The ideas I began with were only just examples and not even very good ones. All I wanted was things to get very topsy turvy and just plain… unnatural. For instance with the unusual weather, it could be raining any number of things, natural fluids such as water, slime, blood, or something completely alien identified only as “Strange Liquid” which when drunk could induce anything from temporary psychosis, vivid hallucinations, food poisoning, blindness, shakes. Effects could be random or catalogued for wiki guides for those that like that.
Other examples I would perhaps be a little more subtle, such as your watch running backwards, or it still being daylight at 2am or pitch black at 2pm. Temperature spikes at different intervals usually days apart or even strange behavior from the local wildlife, squirrels going berserk and attacking wolves, animals committing suicide by drowning themselves.
Books and Newspapers articles read during this time only have the Character’s Name repeated again and again and again, Zombies and Animals might even make utterance of the character’s name grunting out or hissing something that sounds similar to their name.
Of course what I had in mind was to not just to vamp up the difficulty, but to really unnerve the player when they realize something is very, very wrong.
[quote=“Sundaysmile, post:12, topic:8560”]Glad to see some ideas and support.
The ideas I began with were only just examples and not even very good ones. All I wanted was things to get very topsy turvy and just plain… unnatural. For instance with the unusual weather, it could be raining any number of things, natural fluids such as water, slime, blood, or something completely alien identified only as “Strange Liquid” which when drunk could induce anything from temporary psychosis, vivid hallucinations, food poisoning, blindness, shakes. Effects could be random or catalogued for wiki guides for those that like that.
Other examples I would perhaps be a little more subtle, such as your watch running backwards, or it still being daylight at 2am or pitch black at 2pm. Temperature spikes at different intervals usually days apart or even strange behavior from the local wildlife, squirrels going berserk and attacking wolves, animals committing suicide by drowning themselves.
Books and Newspapers articles read during this time only have the Character’s Name repeated again and again and again, Zombies and Animals might even make utterance of the character’s name grunting out or hissing something that sounds similar to their name.
Of course what I had in mind was to not just to vamp up the difficulty, but to really unnerve the player when they realize something is very, very wrong. [/quote]
You’re selling me on this.
I’m still not sure about the “seasonal” thing but I like these ideas.
Good god it’s like reading Junji Ito’s works again. Some of those suggestions would fit better in the current lore setting, others less so. But I like where this is going, at least the time and daylight ones. Not sure what effect the nether’s own worlds would have on our wildlife if they aren’t already mutating into antlered horrors but IT SOUNDS COOL.
Rain of blood just smacks too heavily of dwarf fortress, though theirs is a biome. It’d be neat to see rain of other critters, even if only due to boring natural events like hurricanes plopping zillions of jumping spiders or rotten fish all over.
I may have also suggested - ALL HAIL THE GLOW CLOUD. THE GLOW CLOUD IS ALL. WE ARE NOTHING. A L L H A I L. - but I do like sharks!
But yeah I figure if one can survive being bombarded with heavy animal corpses, and assaulted by the ones that don’t die, there is a lot of meat consumption in one’s future. Rain of animals would have to be balanced somehow to not make it a dinner delivery service, lol.
