Ethics of a persistent world

[Loendal]

Ok, question for the mass opinion polls.

I have a very well situated base of operations, with a mostly-built car in a garage, enough books to teach a small community college and a food supply that (with a bit of cooking skill) can easily feed me for a long long time. I’ve lost 3 characters here, but I can’t bring myself to wipe the world and start completely fresh. It’s taken a long time and alot of effort to build up this base!

When I’ve died, I create a new character and hightail it right back to that base to increase skills, eat healthy and be safe. Even to the point of suiciding out my new character if I am not in an evac shelter near my former character’s base.

What is the public opinion on this type of thing? Is it like a different kind of save scumming or taking advantage of a persistent world in the most self-serving way? It’s just taken so long to get this base built up that I dread the thought of losing it.

[FunsizeNinja123]

Dislike what you’re doing, but if it seems fun for you, do it.

[Rivet]

Nothing wrong with this approach. It’s making novel use of the fact that the game world is persistent between saves.

More power to you, I guess.

[Pthalocy]

I would copy the save folder for that world and keep a backup of it someplace outside the cata game folder. Start a new world, play in it vanilla-style-no-savescum. Bring out your old world every now and again for old time’s sake. Essentially, play two different game modes.

If I were in your position, I would start new games in that world as far as possible from the survivor base, and make a game of trying to rediscover it as a new survivor. Make a sort of pilgrimage quest of it.

I used to do sort of similar by running two survivors simultaneously. Made one nocturnal, the other diurnal. Generally I’d take an ingame ‘day’ playing each one. Sort of like two buddies taking day and night watch. It doesn’t quite work since sleeping forwards past that time for the other, but their sleep schedules were nevertheless offset. If one died out in the field, it was up to the other one to go ‘save’ his friend out there. (obviously the old version would be dead but roleplay, man.) If I could successfully recover the body and belongings of the deceased buddy, I’d re-make his character again and make a mad dash to rediscover his buddy’s base. The world got deleted when both buddies got killed, i.e., neither was able to ‘save’ the other.

[Ricke]

Since its YOUR persistent game world, it’s up your own ethics about what you can do and can’t do.

In my opinion, you are kind of abusing the system of the persistent world a bit too much when you insta kill whatever character who spawn somewhere else. I like the previous comment with the quest idea. It gives your char a goal, with a hefty reward if he/she finds it. I also think this approach would give your base a more interesting story, with the tales of the survivors who tried to find it, driven by the rumours of its abundant resources and shelter.

Heck, make a cemetery inside your base or around it with tilled soil and a sign, in memory of those who found the base, and how it then became their tomb.

[Chaz]

Oh man, Pth’s idea sounds fun!

Personally I tend to delete or re-generate my world after a failed try, as I always play as Chaz, and to have multiple Chazzes in a single world would do terrible, unspeakable things to the flow of space-time! …Not that anyone would notice since the world is already ending in at least seven different other ways at that point.

Occasionally I will go on a hike to find my previous Chaz’s dead body before I abandon the world, though, just for shits and giggles.

[Slax]

Play it your own way seems like a good way of doing things.

[Pthalocy]

Yeah part of the reason I had the remaining survivor ‘find’ his deceased downed buddy was to do the honours of grabbing his gear and butchering the corpse to remove the duplicate prior to re-spawning the ‘saved’ buddy. The other trick to the two-man survivor challenge was I had to return one home before I could play the other. Never have both out in the field. Not safe. (too complicated if someone dies needs saving).

I figure nothing is cheating if you make an interesting challenge or story of it.

[Thwap]

I just restore from save when I die, like everyone does in every other type of game. The roguelike ethos of “Starting from scratch every time you die and replaying the early game dozens of extra times makes you a man!” means nothing to me.

[Loendal]

All good points. I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to my games, always have been. I’m feeling kinda “cheaty” about this, so I think I might have to trash the world just to purge myself of the inner turmoil. I’ve already created a new world, just haven’t gotten around to hitting that delete button on my uber-base (Uber by my definitions, I’m sure other more experienced DDA’rs would call it a temporary shelter with useless goods).

But I can see where this goes against the grain of the whole Roguelike genre… Half the fun is building up, even if it ends in disaster. I’m depriving myself of that part of the game in a way.

Inner Child: But I just found a suit and a helmet of power armor!
Self: Shut up you…
Inner Child: But… the books… The library of handmade bookshelves!
Self: You never read them anyway!
Inner Child: I did too! How do you think I cooked up that broth and those awesome chocolate pancakes? All that medicine and stuff; the bed!
Self: I’ve had enough of your crap.
Inner Child: But the car! The garage! There was that one I was disassembling for parts… and I just found out how to make batteries!
Self: Silence!
Inner Child: The Magical Wheelbarrow of Awesomeness!!
Self: * click *
Inner Child: * lamentation and wailing *
Self: You’re grounded…
Inner Child: * sulk *

[KA101]

Your game, play it your way. If it was a shared or succession world, yeah, issue, but here it’s not.

[HunterAlpha1]

[quote=“Pthalocy, post:4, topic:7860”]I would copy the save folder for that world and keep a backup of it someplace outside the cata game folder. Start a new world, play in it vanilla-style-no-savescum. Bring out your old world every now and again for old time’s sake. Essentially, play two different game modes.

If I were in your position, I would start new games in that world as far as possible from the survivor base, and make a game of trying to rediscover it as a new survivor. Make a sort of pilgrimage quest of it.

I used to do sort of similar by running two survivors simultaneously. Made one nocturnal, the other diurnal. Generally I’d take an ingame ‘day’ playing each one. Sort of like two buddies taking day and night watch. It doesn’t quite work since sleeping forwards past that time for the other, but their sleep schedules were nevertheless offset. If one died out in the field, it was up to the other one to go ‘save’ his friend out there. (obviously the old version would be dead but roleplay, man.) If I could successfully recover the body and belongings of the deceased buddy, I’d re-make his character again and make a mad dash to rediscover his buddy’s base. The world got deleted when both buddies got killed, i.e., neither was able to ‘save’ the other.[/quote]I wonder… if it would be possible to make it so you can control multiple survivors at the same time or almost the same time, kind of like in the Jagged Alliance games.

[KA101]

[quote=“HunterAlpha1, post:12, topic:7860”][quote=“Pthalocy, post:4, topic:7860”]I would copy the save folder for that world and keep a backup of it someplace outside the cata game folder. Start a new world, play in it vanilla-style-no-savescum. Bring out your old world every now and again for old time’s sake. Essentially, play two different game modes.

If I were in your position, I would start new games in that world as far as possible from the survivor base, and make a game of trying to rediscover it as a new survivor. Make a sort of pilgrimage quest of it.

I used to do sort of similar by running two survivors simultaneously. Made one nocturnal, the other diurnal. Generally I’d take an ingame ‘day’ playing each one. Sort of like two buddies taking day and night watch. It doesn’t quite work since sleeping forwards past that time for the other, but their sleep schedules were nevertheless offset. If one died out in the field, it was up to the other one to go ‘save’ his friend out there. (obviously the old version would be dead but roleplay, man.) If I could successfully recover the body and belongings of the deceased buddy, I’d re-make his character again and make a mad dash to rediscover his buddy’s base. The world got deleted when both buddies got killed, i.e., neither was able to ‘save’ the other.[/quote]I wonder… if it would be possible to make it so you can control multiple survivors at the same time or almost the same time, kind of like in the Jagged Alliance games.[/quote]

Better off to rewrite the game from scratch. You’d have to pay Kevin to full-time it, and I doubt the playerbase can outbid Amazon.

[Naeght]

There is also progress to be made from throwing dozens of random characters into the zombie sea trying to find a backpack, before realizing you can just break a window, cut the curtain into rags, dissasamble them into string, make a needle from a bench, and voula! Storage!.

You learn to hold your ground, even with just a stick and a stone, against a few zombies. Yet, you would never know what to focus your efforts into if you dont know the middle game a bit, and having a persistent shelter is a good way to do it. I would advice do both, especially the spawn and quest for the shelter route.

Also, pay attention to the furniture, that sofa? Full of rags to fix your clothes. That refrigerator holds a rubber hose you can use to funnel cars, and you can snort cocaine on the tub.

[Miloch]

I think what you should do when you have a good base like this is give the save file to someone else. Let them find it in your world. That’d be cool. Save sharing.

[Thwap]

I will say that if you load from save when you’re screwed, you have to have the discipline to just ignore Granades. If you throw them on yourself and savescum only buffs then you pretty quickly turn into Superman and everything just gets ridiculous. Thankfully I made a point of backing up my save before I did this.

[chevil]

I think that the start of the game when you are constantly freezing and starving is the best part of the game. Once I have good gear and skills I switch from survival mode to lets do something fun and die. Finding a old base full of my old stuff would remove a lot of desperate dashes for food and other such fun things.

[Ricke]

[…] and you can snort cocaine on the tub.

The more you know.

I agree with Naeght about the value of playing early-mid game a lot. Learning the “tools of the trade”.

[mdtexeira]

I can’t really say much, as I have delete world on, except have fun and don’t worry about ethics in single-player games (unless you find that fun as well).

[Jarlaxle]

I think that the start of the game when you are constantly freezing and starving is the best part of the game. Once I have good gear and skills I switch from survival mode to lets do something fun and die. Finding a old base full of my old stuff would remove a lot of desperate dashes for food and other such fun things.

This is why I personally never have nice things. Once I establish a solid base, plenty of food and a cleared town I end up getting bored and get killed in a manner befitting a special Olympics runner up.