Fixing clothing mechanics (Gamebalance,goofyness,etc)

I didn’t know you could wear 2 back packs or 2 leather backpack or even ALL of them together.
SHAME SHAME SHAME SHAME SHAME
YES TO WHATEVER THE HELL OP SAID

You neither understand the point you support, nor the underlying mechanics it addresses, but you’re going to agree with it wholeheartedly? Not the approach I would have chosen, I must say.

May I request that people post more specifics than literally “I like a few of those ideas” or “I didn’t even read it but yes”? There’s at least 5 ideas that can be counted separately, of which some haven’t even been commented on yet. Was also hoping for some input from the actual devs given how they’re usually the final word on this sort of thing, but they seem to have surprisingly little to say.

[quote=“Binky, post:10, topic:5035”]Item capping is a tricky subject, mostly as a lot of players (or the ones on this forum) are against any kind of hard caps (I myself am usually against them) for roleplaying reasons. A way around this would possibly be done by having a distributed encumbrance. So lets say you got 10 encumbrance on legs (out of 20 max. for instance) that could put 2 encumbrance on everything else. This would be a representation of body strain. Obviously this would need to be worked out but would stop just min/maxing melee or ranged.

Although a truly overhauled inventory system would be good, I feel that encumbrance needs to be fixed as well/could be fixed in the mean time.[/quote]

Roleplaying reasons, therefore no hard limits and remove what are currently the only two character builds regarding clothing? Your priorities are reverse of mine. I generally prefer DDA as a game than a carefree sandbox, and the community seems kind of split on that. If you wanted to implement a “fix” overnight, a distributed encumbrance would help but there’s still some issues with things I consider important to DDA as a game, namely pretty much everything I mentioned feeding into the game being both too trivial and needing more functional player decisions.

That is just a “quick fix” though. The point of my OP was discussion an actual fix. If you don’t like it “because roleplay”, then you don’t have much to discuss here. I’m talking gameplay mechanics here, the subject is how to fix them. The issue isn’t that there are logical character builds which exist, and as long as a encumbrance distribution is only partial then the torso/legs encumbrance min-maxing are still the only two logical outcomes but just nerfed. A hard cap on items per logical location gives a full distribution of encumbrance for a third logical build of min-maxed storage space, and combined with blocked storage + more fragile nonarmor gives a fourth logical character build for maximized armor. More player decisions and player compromise like these are a good thing, and I don’t see why you need to wear four loaded backpacks or use all pockets on six layered pairs of pants to “roleplay”.

I don’t see why the hardcore “roleplay” crowd would be so against hard caps either, given these are also falling under “realism”.

Bork I’m confused. I pretty much agree with everything you’ve said.

I agree with a hard cap, but I know many people won’t be (‘I can wear 4 backpacks! I can wear 12 pairs of trousers!’ and so on). This isn’t roleplay as in ‘I want to roleplay Mad Max 2’, but more that a constraint on freedom (Like max two shoulder items) will annoy people. I don’t agree, I think hardcaps are needed, but I’m just saying what others (from past posts) will undoubtedly feel. Distributed encumbrance was a way around this, as it doesn’t put any hard limits for anything. You can still pump strength and be a walking tank, but you can’t just have 5 backpacks on without slowing to a crawl. This could be later mixed with a MUCH higher rate of encumbrance for two items on one part (as per your suggestion).

Now not to be a dick (even though your ‘you don’t have much to discuss here’ comment was uncalled for) but I’m not getting into the quick fix argument unless you can code your original proposal yourself. If you can, great, but if not then you need to realise that the simplest way is probably the best, as we don’t have a massively coding capacity. This is just to say that when we’ve got such limited capacity, things need to be able to be done fast or no change at all will happen (see NPCs/loads and loads of other things - that isn’t a knock at anyone, it’s just reality). I feel distributed would be quickest (as it’s basically ‘if encumbrance above 5, + 1 to every other part’)

That’s all, and there’s no need for the arsey attitude (or from you either Inadequate)

A possible solution might be to put a hard cap per slot that is based on how much total encumbrance you have there, rather then on an item basis (so you might only have 10 encumbrance’s with of space on each part, for example). That would represent how you can layer 10 shirts but only wear 1-2 backpacks IRL rather well IMO.

HA!
I re-read and liked all the damn ideas!
Especially the last 3 “additions”.
Time to make expanded military rucksack and never wear the survivor vest ever again!.
ALSO, no more drop leg pouches because that makes you SLOW!

[quote=“Binky, post:24, topic:5035”]Bork I’m confused. I pretty much agree with everything you’ve said.
Distributed encumbrance was a way around this, as it doesn’t put any hard limits for anything.
Now not to be a dick (even though your ‘you don’t have much to discuss here’ comment was uncalled for)

That’s all, and there’s no need for the arsey attitude (or from you either Inadequate)[/quote]
Distributed encumbrance is not an acceptable solution for me. That is all.

And I meant the “nothing to discuss” literally. I didn’t start this to discuss roleplay. I do not want to discuss it. Do not bring it up. I stated in the OP, do not bring it up. The game is broken. Hence I post.

[quote=“Bork^3, post:27, topic:5035”]Distributed encumbrance is not an acceptable solution for me. That is all.

And I meant the “nothing to discuss” literally. I didn’t start this to discuss roleplay. I do not want to discuss it. Do not bring it up. I stated in the OP, do not bring it up. The game is broken. Hence I post.[/quote]

Why isn’t it an acceptable solution (as in, I really do actually want to know)? It has the same end result of stopping ridiculous layering of clothing. Granted, hard caps might be nicer in some ways, but would probably involve quite a bit of coding work and fiddling (every item would need to be changed for one) and then a lot of discussing what the top limit is.

I don’t think you can say ‘no discussion of roleplay’ on a game which IS a roleplaying game. Yeah, I get you don’t want people to say ‘Oh I just role play around/ignore what I don’t like’ as that is ANNOYING AS HELL AND MAKES NO SENSE, but surely people discussing the roleplaying impact is useful.
Some people like to hoard and wear lots of crazy stuff. I was just pointing out not to underestimate that some people enjoy DDA as a more RP than RL experience and putting lots of hard caps on stuff makes people instantly jump to the ‘YOU’RE LIMITING MY FUN’ conclusion.

Well, I did just answer that with an example of how the caps (with the other suggestions in OP) expand logical character builds but encumbrance-distribution merely nerfs the existing two builds. But if you want a longer version of the general answer: The issues require a more complex solution than existing mechanics which can no longer cope with the expanding content. There’s considerably more and more powerful items than just the original trenchcoat+backpack as in the original cataclysm that the simple encumbrance system was made, and they don’t even fully correspond to the original encumbrance system. Case in point: the expanding “survivor” and “military” sets. Currently, they’re a bit OP being intended as end-game stuff, and include a myriad of new things like custom pouches, slings, holsters, and rigs on top of more armor. We do need more mid and late game content but they’re rather broken, encumbrance or no. We need actual mechanics (more clothing flags and limitations) to deal with them and I think there’s considerable potential for expansion of actual, functional, gameplay decisions as discussed in the OP. Merely tacking on some more encumbrance penalties is a suboptimal solution IMO.

This isn’t hard to do either. We already have hard caps on shoes and helmets as well as other expanded clothing (IE power armor). They’re not exactly hard to implement.

Big obvious thing to solve much of this: Instead of having items with X volume and the character able to carry a volume of items equal to the storage of all his clothes added up, have each item exist in a specific piece of clothing that must have Storage greater than or equal to the volume of the item. This solves the “I put a gallon jug of bleach into 2 pairs of pants and a jacket” problem as well as increasing the difficulty of the game.

With such a system, survivors would still be able to carry around a million pills and bullets and small tools, but carrying multiple weapons or big loot like jerrycans or televisions would be more challenging. I think this would be a good first step, and after some playtesting we can figure out which clothing items to nerf and if a revamp of the encumbrance system is necessary.

Indeed, and said system is actually planned, we just need to track down a developer willing to put in the (non-trivial) amount of time and work needed to implement it.

When considering the layering of clothing, how about exponential encumbrance increases for each added layer, for example Jeans has X base encumbrance, so when I wear two pairs of jeans, my legs have X^2+X encumbrance, however, there are clothes designed to be worn over other forms of clothing. Holsters and fanny packs are simple examples. Drop leg styles should increase the exponent of the second layer by one when used in conjunction with layered pants, for example, making two pairs of jeans X^3+X encumberance. Also, some clothes which are rather encumbering already are also meant to be layered, like snow pants in addition to normal pants. They’re designed to be worn over other pants, so they get no exponent when wearing ON THE TOP LAYER. If they are placed behind ANYTHING, the exponent should go to 4. This would seriously hamper individuals who layer pants heavily, and only a few adjustments would need to be made to make this work for other clothes (You can wear t-shirts over long-sleeved shirts, for example, for almost no encumbrance) Glove liners naturally do not add exponential boosts to the next glove’s encumbrance, so on and so forth, judging based on the RL conditions of use (You can put a runner pack on at the same time as a backpack/messenger bag, if I’m assuming correctly that runner packs are the fabric bags some people take to gyms or field trips containing their lunches and such) Also, for inventory tweaks, why not segment the inventory based on containers, with the most easily accessible containers (pockets, pouches, or vest pockets) on the top, and the harder to get at items closer to the bottom (Also consider allowing an individual to move items between bags) and for multipouch bags (backpacks, anyone?) get sorted compartments (they show the items by type) while other bags are more random in their organisation (though a patient individual may be able to sort their stuff neatly).

With all that I said, I just hope I conveyed it in a concise enough manner to be understood

Note- I wrote this before the last two posts… Just took me forever to consolidate to the pertinent stuff.

Mythbusters busted that one hard; steeltoed boots are in every possible way superior to other boots. Yes they COULD theoretically curl in and cut you, but by the time they did your foot would have taken enough damage to be little more than a grease stain on the floor anyway. About the only superior option would be fully steel-clad boots, unless of course you’re worried about the electrical considerations.