Earnable Traits

[mercylost]

Some games use achievements to emulate character growth beyond what’s allowed by skills. So, instead of “Drink 'Til Ya Drop” for consuming 500 alcohols you’d develop “Alcohol Tolerance” and eventually “Korsakoff’s Syndrom.” The most important thing is to design these to have as little programming needed as possible.

Another example might be “Well Read,” which would grant a minuscule increase in read speed, stack-able with Fast Reader.

So far, the Achievements I’ve seen discussed here revolve around WTF factor. That’s why I started a new topic. Achievements or Earnable Traits that reflect your character’s story.

[FunsizeNinja123]

Hmm…

[ChristopherWalken]

While I really like the idea (and have been thinking about it for quite a while) I fear it would cause two things:
1- Juggle with the balance
2- Cause everyone to grind towards the main favourable traits

[Ice-o-metric]

[quote=“ChristopherWalken, post:3, topic:5985”]While I really like the idea (and have been thinking about it for quite a while) I fear it would cause two things:
1- Juggle with the balance
2- Cause everyone to grind towards the main favourable traits[/quote]
You know, i think this sums it up quite well. I REALLY like the idea, but wouldn’t want it making things too easy.

That said, is anyone else not somehow unfullfilled that no matter how much you train you can’t improve your base stats? Something like this would be good for that, because the trait would cap the amount you could improve a stat (without mutagens or CBMs) and might possibly require upkeep to not lose the trait (kind of like how mutagens are a double edged sword that giveth and taketh away)

Addendum: If ‘Well Read’ even just reduced skill-rust i would happily read even useless books to maintain it!

[mercylost]

I’m not sure how upkeep would work, but I definitely like that idea. I mean, alcohol tolerance should wear off eventually.
Though I’d suggest only having that with some traits. For example, say one needs to read 200 complete books for “Well Read”. A character completing this in 2 months would be doing 1,200 books a year. I would never, ever take that honor away from someone.
And Korsakoff’s Syndrom is a form of psychosis inducing brain damage brought on by nutritional deficiencies caused by prolonged and severe alcohol consumption. This, this doesn’t wear off.

Item 1 and 2 can be addressed pretty effectively by only inputting weak traits at first. Not something anyone would grind to reach, but for mostly roleplay and slight mechanical benefits. Some people would take pride in having read thousands of books throughout their life, some people are proud of the fact that they can drink people under the table and develop brain/liver damage.

Honestly, I rarely play a game beyond the beginning unless things are going shit for me. Seriously, my last 50 characters were tweakers because surviving that start was an accomplishment the game recognized.

[Birdie]

Maybe Alcohol Resistant could make you (to a lesser extent then the drunkenness resistance) resistant to the morale of drinking, as well. Though… that may just nullify the point of it being a trait.

[John_Candlebury]

Honestly, I rarely play a game beyond the beginning unless things are going shit for me. Seriously, my last 50 characters were tweakers because surviving that start was an accomplishment the game recognized.

Did I miss something important regarding achievements?

How does the game recognize it?

[FunsizeNinja123]

ACHIEVEMENTS…!!!

[mercylost]

Sorry, Tweaker is recognized by the fact that all of mine have so far ended in horrible, painful deaths. The reward I get is, eventually, not being dead.

[Straume21]

I actually had thought about this in great detail before, but eventually given up on it.
While the idea seems fun at first, it could lead to further unbalanced an already unbalanced endgame, and furthermore it would only be achievable to dedicated players who invest a lot into the game.

My base idea for this happened a number of months ago when I started thinking about the possibility of increasing a character’s strength through conventional means.

With the addition of “Gym” as a building in the game, the player could [a]ctivate the immensely heavy weight sets in the building and over time, gain the Strong (+1) trait, and eventually max out at the Extremely Strong (+4) trait.
Players with enough metal and a solid forge in their base could craft a weight set out of parts.
This could be sped along with the consumption of protein (via protein powder), and through a new kind of drug, anabolic steroids (which could lower health and give characters the Bad Temper trait as well as increasing strength when taken with exercise).

Furthermore, the player could [a]ctivate treadmills in the building, and through regular use, increase their running speed over time.
Players with a high enough electronics skill and a lot of spare parts could craft this in their own base.

[Straume21]

I think that instead of a new “Well Read” trait that focused only on reading, the player could use very difficult books over time to eventually earn the Smart (+1) trait, and with enough reading, the Extremely Smart (+4) trait, which would blanket not only reading, but a number of other activities, making reading more useful in general.
Obviously books that don’t require high intelligence (<10) wouldn’t have any effect on trait development, but books could vary in their contribution to the development of the trait by the intelligence requirement on them, meaning that books that are harder to read would have more of an effect.
Furthermore, this would give more of a use to those random books lying around in libraries and whatnot. To get this trait, you’d need to read more than just skill books.

Another possibility would be a trait that lowered the morale penalties from difficult books, meaning the player would be able to more easily read harder books with practice.
“Accomplished Reader,” possibly.

[Straume21]

Another idea I had was that hard drugs could give permanent negative traits with extended use, such as a meth, cocaine, or heroin abuser having permanently Shaky Hands or Chemical Imbalance by upsetting their body’s natural processes.

[i2amroy]

The way I look at it is generally traits are permanent, biological parts of you. They therefore can only be changed by 3 things, mutating, permanent damage (such as nerve damage), or growing older (which is not something in the game). Other things should probably eventually be moved out either to a skill system to represent the ability to improve (such as reading/illiteracy) or moved as a subclass of another system (such as shaky hands for addicts). Take the strength trait for example, generally I don’t think of this as “the character has bigger muscles and is stronger” but rather as “the character is slightly stronger than a normal human would be if they were otherwise the same”. It’s not something you would change by training (though training could certainly compensate for it) but rather something that is biologically part of you. The Extremely Strong character will always be stronger than the normal one if they undergo the same training, due to their muscles just being biologically stronger.

As for being able to raise stats through training, it’s certainly something that has and is being looked at. The largest problem simply comes down to the fact that you need to be very careful about your implementation, or the new meta is going to become “and then grind stats for the first month before running around fighting hulks with your 60 STR and DEX”. Stat growth should be caused by being a successful survivor; being a successful survivor shouldn’t be caused by having stat growth.

[Straume21]

[quote=“i2amroy, post:13, topic:5985”]The way I look at it is generally traits are permanent, biological parts of you. They therefore can only be changed by 3 things, mutating, permanent damage (such as nerve damage), or growing older (which is not something in the game). Other things should probably eventually be moved out either to a skill system to represent the ability to improve (such as reading/illiteracy) or moved as a subclass of another system (such as shaky hands for addicts). Take the strength trait for example, generally I don’t think of this as “the character has bigger muscles and is stronger” but rather as “the character is slightly stronger than a normal human would be if they were otherwise the same”. It’s not something you would change by training (though training could certainly compensate for it) but rather something that is biologically part of you. The Extremely Strong character will always be stronger than the normal one if they undergo the same training, due to their muscles just being biologically stronger.

As for being able to raise stats through training, it’s certainly something that has and is being looked at. The largest problem simply comes down to the fact that you need to be very careful about your implementation, or the new meta is going to become “and then grind stats for the first month before running around fighting hulks with your 60 STR and DEX”. Stat growth should be caused by being a successful survivor; being a successful survivor shouldn’t be caused by having stat growth.[/quote]

Conclusions I had, myself, already reached, ignored here for the sake of discussion within the thread.

[KA101]

Seconding i2amroy. Tougher than you might think.

[Zireael]

There are several roguelikes out there which do stat growth in a sensible way, basically similar to how skills work now (that is, repeating same task over and over won’t get you over some sort of a threshold)

[Jakers]

How about adding barbells + benchpresses (this an example for one attribute) to increase your strength after A LOT of work. By A LOT a mean a lot. Maybe get the ‘strong’ trait or something, but no higher! Unless, we’re willing to take this to the next level and benchpress cars.

[mercylost]

? 1. What events can cause addiction? I understand consumables, but is there anything else that can hook someone?

I ask because if nonconsumables could cause addiction, then I could (hypothetically) program Well Read as an addiction. This would make it stealthy, only showing up when causing effect, as well as lose-able via “rehab.” Hell, I could even program a minor morale loss when you haven’t read anything lately. Also, this /

[Deadman]

How about adding barbells + benchpresses (this an example for one attribute) to increase your strength after A LOT of work. By A LOT a mean a lot. Maybe get the ‘strong’ trait or something, but no higher! Unless, we’re willing to take this to the next level and benchpress cars.

As someone who knew people that used to flip cars for the fun of it, I can tell you that this is possible.
Not practical, but possible.
(As long as you’re only talking about one end of the vehicle, and it’s the end without the engine.)
Plus the added bonus that they looked like your average Asian-American, only with a little more muscle.
However, given this, they most certainly qualify for the ‘Exceptionally Strong’ trait that i2amroy was talking about.