Ethos and Roadmap

[Binky]

[ul]GlyphGryph has said that an ethos and roadmap would be a good idea (see below) and I’d quite like to make that happen so that we have a clearer view of the games direction and what is seen as acceptable main line additions.

Do people really dislike the Heatblades?

I think an ethos and roadmap would actually be a very very good idea. Please help make it happen.

I don’t know the best way to go abound doing this, and I don’t think it’d help for us all to just pitch in our idea of what we want it to look like, so I guess dev team questions is the best way to go. I’ve got some questions which might help move things along:

[list]
[li]What is the ‘top limit’ for (non-artefact) technology? Should it be constrained in our current physics and capability (plus a few realistic advancements)?[/li]
[li]What is the balance between survival and action? As in, is the aim for it to be a gritty survival game where each day is a struggle, or for it to be an action-RL with crafting? I know ‘a balance’ is probably true, but any elaboration would be useful[/li]
[li]Thematically, are we aiming for more of a survival zombie horror game (with a few supernatural surprises), or an aliens/supernatural theme which happens to have zombies? [/li]
[li]Are we aiming for traditional RL standard (DCSS/Hack/Band) challenge or a more sandbox style game? I realise this has been talked about to some extent, and that it’ll aim to have a better curve, but overall, is it going to be more challenging than it is currently, or stay about the same? [/li][/list]

Please add more questions if you have them, especially if they’re of a tighter nature than my admittedly broad/open ones.[/ul]

[GlyphGryph]

We have opened and begun working on this document. If you’re interested in actually helping draft the document, you can contact Rivet, but note that we are trying to limit the central writers of the document to those who’ve had extended experience with several parts of the existing lore and mechanics, and who have been following the game for a while and thus have a good feel of the places it was already heading, and who have demonstrated the ability to see consequences of changes well in advance.

Mostly I just want a limited number of people directly touching it so that something approaching a consensus is actually possible though.

However, everyone will be able to read the document and post suggested changes here, so don’t feel like you can’t contribute just because you aren’t one of th editors.

[Dominae]

Good to hear, Gryph.

Hopefully setting up some overall world and lore boundaries and the like will help focus us “caring community members”/forum-goers into directions where you folks want or need help and input from us.

Wishful thinking but maybe it’ll better channel the debates we have, and kill off some of the trolling BS as we can just point to a sticky up top and say "the dev’s said in point #7 that the main game is going to be… "

… ya know, help us realize what would fit “the main game” and what we should obviously pack into tack-on mods for when the mod manager is up and running I love mods, the more the better IMHO, but we all need that hard line.

[Birdie]

What’s an Ethos?

[TheGrifter]

I’m not sure if perhaps you mean genre and not ethos.

If by ethos, you mean a set of guiding principles and ideals as a community, I think we’ve been doing okay.

There’s been some demoralization, but that happens. Speaking of which, a character several years into the apocalypse should ride the line between “is this real” or is this fake.

There are more mental diseases than schizophrenia and hoarding, and I think that the longer you go in the apocalypse, the more gradual the transition from the reality of the hoards of undead outside to a more fantasy world. Of course, in this game, there are no “good” hallucinations, or coping madnesses. Drugs in it have a nice short term win/long term burnout, but people in the real world are nuttier than you’d think. A lot of it is coping.

The player ought to get mental traits that make the spawning of these supernatural “Lovecraft” creatures more likely.
Make a hallu_version spawn nine times out of ten, but then the tenth one is real.

Also, monsters ought to get worse. Dermatiks into chestburster-like things, zombies having various degrees of decay and slowing down, radiation increasing.

As James Cameron wrote in the screenplay for Strange Days, “Things got bad. Then, they got worse.”.
Speaking of which, anyone ever see that movie? Great sci-fi reference to pull things from.

[Binky]

[quote=“TheGrifter, post:5, topic:4592”]I’m not sure if perhaps you mean genre and not ethos.

If by ethos, you mean a set of guiding principles and ideals as a community, I think we’ve been doing okay.[/quote]

By Ethos I meant the ‘philosophy’ of the game and a very similar thing to the DCSS philosophy:
http://crawl.develz.org/other/manual.html#n-philosophy-pas-de-faq

So sort of the main goals and aims of the project as well as what the devs feel are the guiding principles. For instance DCSS philosophy/ethos is strongly against ‘no-brainers’ and grinding.

As a long time member of the DCSS forum I can say for sure that it really does help, especially with a community contributed game when issues like people getting upset that their code (which they may have spent weeks on) is getting pulled/rejected come along.

[Birdie]

Oh!
http://th08.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/f/2012/179/2/9/do_you_believe_in_magic__by_fusspot-d557f5u.jpg
Relevant, I think!