Voted “needs balance” as there’s no “needs a re-design” option.
And regarding the CBM changes in general, I’m going to say what I already said previously.
CBM were supposed to be a kit of the bionic and all the tools needed to install it.
A brand new CBM looted from a locked cage in a lab should not need anaesthetic or any kind of tool to install it.
A salvaged or butchered bionic out of a corpse, should need anaesthetic and tools to install
Thanks to #20892 any CBM regardless if it was hard earned through lab raiding and hacking a locked box or just killing and butchering a random technician, needs lots of painkillers.
So far installing CBM already made almost obligatory to use any kind of intelligence enhancing drug to reduce the fail chances. Which is what the majority of players did, as it has become the current metagame of installing CBMs. As the consequence of a bad installation range from a faulty bionic, mutation or death.
This seems to be a rather lazy and incomplete implementation of distinguishing between low-difficulty RNG based butchered bionics or hard-difficulty looted CBMs proper.
I understand the need between killing a zombie technician with a rock in a sock, butcher it with a pocket knife and getting a CBM; and having to get a lab card, deal with security turrets, manhacks and security bots, hack a CBM display case to get a CBM.
Plus painkillers being as vague as they are at telling the player how much is enough, and that there’s a fine line between enough painkillers and “your breath stops completely”, having specialized anaesthetic would be needed for the current state of CBMs.
If we are going to differentiate between CBMs and butchered bionic, we need a properly designed and implemented system. Instead of further penalizing all kinds of CBMs regardless of how they were acquired.
And even less if it is going to be done just slapping fixes and patches on top of the previous changes.
If the end goal is to flesh-out and add more realism to CBMs, it should first be designing thoroughly as a whole and then implemented.
Not just add random bits here and there, and then slap band-aids when players find out that it is badly made.
I think the benefits of re-designing from the ground up an existing game mechanic versus adding small changes and then band-aids on top of those changes, without having into account the game mechanic as a whole are far outweighs it the “improvising” method.
As improvising causes a great deal of issues, and sometimes create a cascade of issues, as CBMs need painkiller has show:
[ul][li]Sudden uncommunicated change to CBMs idea as a whole[/li]
[li]Use of a one of the very few opaque mechanics to the player[/li]
[li]Creation of game-breaking situations: coupling of opaque mechanic with the new mechanic resulting in unexplained death[/li]
[li]Causing rushed fixes for said mechanic: no CBM painkiller mod, adding more detailed information, bringing to high priority reworking of previous existing game mechanic[/li][/ul]
Now I heard several player “fixes” for it like trying using a “trial and error” method. But so far in CDDA there’s hasn’t being a focus on mechanics and items which causes instantaneous death, without telling the player how she dies, only why.
“Why” as in “your breath stops completely” due to painkiller overdose.
“How” as in you don’t know how much painkillers increase the painkiller cap number nor how much is that mysterious number.
It can be solved too if the player is forced to look at the source code, or “trial and error” when “error” means death.
Regarding forcing the player to take a look the source doe and JSON files to understand how to play and not die. A game should never force the player to have to look under the hood to learn how to play. That’s a sign of bad game design.
Regarding “trial and error”.
CDDA has never been that type of rogue-like, unless of course this is the point which CDDA turns into a high-stakes, high-tension win all or loose all game.
In which case I would stop playing the new CDDA, and I’ll be switching to Coolthulhu’s patches, as I think it would retain the spirit of the old CDDA.
Going into detail of the cascade of fixes needed, this “improvising” method of doing things brings forth the opaque painkiller mechanic, turning it from a relatively unobtrusive system, to a critical system as it causes instantaneous player death.
“Opaque” as this is one of the very few mechanics in-game that doesn’t give any clear information or feedback to the player. It relies on a hidden painkiller number, items that increases said stats without informing the player of how, and then causing instantaneous death if the painkiller number goes above certain hidden number.
All of this increasing the amount of work, player frustration and specially making it not fun to play.
And at the end of the day fun and entertainment is all this is about, if bad game design takes away your fun and entertainment then I hope that Coolthulhu’s patches and people like Coolthulhu will keep working for making the game fun us.