Get mad, shoot your family, bad experiences and slight suggestions

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

What i see a lot in the game is the infinity number of towns you can get/smash/loot/burn/explode/burn again by and the character wont stop for even half a second to realize that whatever he is doing in whatever house you’re looting or using as a shelter for the night it’s another person or even families former household, of course who would care when Dancing Zombies roam the street and creepy yet surprisingly functional Eyebots watch your every move.

What i’m trying to tell is that yeah no one lives here anymore so who cares, loot away on this house in a suburbanish area with a motherf#$%&!@ gun basement, kill this Kid Zombie and feel bad about it for five minutes then kill a dog, skin it, eat it, and don’t feel bad at all, there should be a specific segment of the map designed to be the survivor’s former town, i have no clue if the town you start in IS your actual hometown since any regard for personal life/memories seemed to be replaced with the ongoing end of humanity.

An area specifically designed to make you feel like utter shit and drop your morale to bottom, or feel nostalgic or whatever, a brand new zombie maybe called “Familiar Zombie” or “Hey-i-used-to-know-you Zombie”, who’s demise may bring your character to unpreviously reached bottom morale since University Level Books masochism.

This area in particular not only holds your regular dosage of the undead but now comes with emotions and everything, find your actual dead mom and friggin, i dunno, have this awkward battle where the player in-game simply cannot harm her, and where to put this particular morale dropper? Your house, actual i-grew-up-here house, like just setting foot in this building messes with the player mind. Because nothing asides from drugs seem to do that because this person is inmune to traumatic experiences such as slashing a former person in half or exploding a dog with dynamite, etc.

I feel like there should be more downbringers to morale other than books and killing a kid because if you dont have the “Anti-Violence-Hippy_hippy” perk, nothing else seems to do so.

Another suggestion might be the ability to go prone, crawling, hell crouching is good for that, because shooting standing still is the most awkward thing ever and trust me it is awkward. Experienced shooters recomend going prone or laying the gun barrel agaisnt the frame of a window in suburban areas because this not only reduces recoil, but improves aiming speed and accuracy.

Another thing id like to mention is how the player goes years without human contact (or at least mine has) and they suffer no penalties of psychological episodes, this is a real thing that affects people and damages theyr phsyce without mercy.

I dont even know if any of this was ever discussed i just felt like adding it to the suggestion box.

2

Killing your mom?Just use explosives,misses,creatures hostile to zombies,vehicles.

3

There is one simple problem with this: You would take away massive amounts of player freedom if the game has what you describes.

CDDA isn’t only a Roguelike, it’s also a roleplaying game ; people create their own player, they create backstories for their characters, they decide how the character behaves, how they try to survive, or even >if< they want to survive. Now, to your ideas:

  1. Set home-town: You take away the freedom of the player to choose where the character is from. Did he live in the town next to the shelter? Were they on vacation and were caught in the Cataclysm? Maybe they were obducted or they just moved to the new town. You realize something? All of those possibilities possibly clash with a set home town, and at least 2, possible 3 of those possibilities would make a morale drop because of ‘seeing your home town’ impossible (On vacation? you don’t really have massive emotions for a specific town. Obducted? Maybe you’re not from New ENgland and you never really saw one of the towns or had time to get emotions for a town/the citizens. Recently moved? Maybe you lived in a whole other nation before…)

  2. Zombie-Relatives: Bad Idea as well. As shown in 1., your family might not even be in New England. Or maybe the player-created past says the player never had siblings, or their parents already died - where would a brother/sister/father/mother zombie then come from? The ‘Mother’ Hallucination is more viable, simply because it’s not real and most people either >know< their mother or have someone who they consider to be their mother (Even if it’s not their real mother.)

  3. traumatic experiences: While on paper a good thing, a bad thing ingame-wise. How could a game be interesting if you can’t even kill one of the main enemies without having a traumatic experience and what not? He, i killed a zombie in CDDA! . . . now my character lies on the floor, sobbing, and theres a hulk closing in…you see the problem? I’m all for realism in games, but you have to change some things in order to make a game fun to play…
    Also, theres also the option that the character, because hes in a state of danger, panic and so on, just ‘ignores’ what they saw or they did, because survival is more important. This is also something you shouldn’t forget, our Mind is great at keeping itself somewhat sane ; It locks the memory away, buries it under something else or simply tries to ignore it. Theres also the possibility that the mind >can’t< or >don’t want to< understand whats going on or what they do.
    There was a discussion prior to this one, a few montsh old by now (i think) - it had a similar topic, about some kind of threshold which will increase over time, because the survivor becomes accustomed to the killing and so on - I think it was dropped for for a similar reason i stated above, because it would make playing the first few days nearly impossible as you couldn’t go near a town without breaking that treshold.

  4. prone/crawling/crouching: Already talked about, while people were talking about sneaking - Not sure what happened to the discussion, but i know that there was at least 1 dev in that discussion too.

  5. going crazy due loneliness: Yes, real thing. Again, not a viable option to implement because of the current limitations of the game. NPCS and factions are >not< finished as of now, some people don’t even have them active. Thats probably one of the main reasons the game does not have some kind of loneliness modifier, as it would make playing without npcs nearly impossible.

4

well, too long to read everything, but i can tell you for sure i would have absolutely no morale penalties for killing any of my relatives/beloved if they became a zombie.

On the same note, i find unrealistic even the zombie child killing guilt, since i, for example, would not feel any such guilt, since they’re zombies already, not normal human beings.

5

You’d be fine mutilating the dead body of a recently deceased family member? Or a child? Or mutilating the dead body of a recently deceased family member that’s still showing signs of life?

Now, I’ve personally never done any of those things, and it’s hard to tell for sure how you’d react in a situation like cataclysm, but I can imagine I might find it a wee bit distressing. Either you don’t know yourself as well as you think you do, or you do… and there’s a non-zero chance you’re a sociopath. :smiley:

Hell, even if the psychological effects weren’t immediate, eventually a decent ratio of the survivors in cataclysm would probably end up suffering from PTSD or something similar (PS not suggesting the game model that! Although it is an interesting idea… kinda like Darkest Dungeon).

6

[quote=“someguy, post:5, topic:10141”]You’d be fine mutilating the dead body of a recently deceased family member? Or a child? Or mutilating the dead body of a recently deceased family member that’s still showing signs of life?

Now, I’ve personally never done any of those things, and it’s hard to tell for sure how you’d react in a situation like cataclysm, but I can imagine I might find it a wee bit distressing. Either you don’t know yourself as well as you think you do, or you do… and there’s a non-zero chance you’re a sociopath. :smiley:

Hell, even if the psychological effects weren’t immediate, eventually a decent ratio of the survivors in cataclysm would probably end up suffering from PTSD or something similar (PS not suggesting the game model that! Although it is an interesting idea… kinda like Darkest Dungeon).[/quote]

Your problem is that you judge everything i wrote from your worldview (google translate suggested it but i think it doesn’t mean the same thing as the original).

For me a dead body, doesn’t matter whom it was, is not more important than a rock or anything else. The body is like a costume for the soul. Once the soul leaves the body, it has nothing to do with that human being anymore. So yeah, i could butcher a human body just as easy as butchering the body of an animal i slew for food. No emotions involved, like at all.

It’s just physical matter, like pork meat, for example. I guess you wouldn’t have anything against slicing a chunk of pork meat.

7

You can actually roleplay what you said here. That’s the awesome thing of the game. While you roleplay that, I roleplay a dude that got his dog killed and will try to destroy all zombies.

8

Another thing is that were talking about a SURVIVOR here, they might have been totally normal before the cataclysm, but they pocess qualities that MAKE them survivors, so the game doesn’t have to go out of the way to model “ordinary” people. the main character probably has a great mind for keeping together and staying focused and functional…which is WHY they aren’t ALREADY a zombie before the game starts :smiley:

also… I doubt you would have NO reservations about cutting up a dead body, possible, but even with the view of “its only matter/ flesh” the mind tends to make connections, even if we feel them logically different. I don’t doubt you would still shoot zombie mom/dad/brother etc… and cut them up somehow if you thought they would come back if you didn’t, but you would probably still be a LITTLE affected by the fact that your cutting apart flesh. Even a deer is not exactly something you just dive into skinning and quartering without a little side thought of “oh shit Im doing…this.” cut up some already cooked piece of meat on your plate? sure easy enough even if you know EXACTLY where it came from on the animal, and saw the animal before when it was alive. Cuttting up a body however, lets the mind make to many full connections. I bet you could still do it, but it wouldn’t be some thoughtless action as you seem to convey.

9

[quote=“Litppunk, post:8, topic:10141”]Another thing is that were talking about a SURVIVOR here, they might have been totally normal before the cataclysm, but they pocess qualities that MAKE them survivors, so the game doesn’t have to go out of the way to model “ordinary” people. the main character probably has a great mind for keeping together and staying focused and functional…which is WHY they aren’t ALREADY a zombie before the game starts :smiley:

also… I doubt you would have NO reservations about cutting up a dead body, possible, but even with the view of “its only matter/ flesh” the mind tends to make connections, even if we feel them logically different. I don’t doubt you would still shoot zombie mom/dad/brother etc… and cut them up somehow if you thought they would come back if you didn’t, but you would probably still be a LITTLE affected by the fact that your cutting apart flesh. Even a deer is not exactly something you just dive into skinning and quartering without a little side thought of “oh shit Im doing…this.” cut up some already cooked piece of meat on your plate? sure easy enough even if you know EXACTLY where it came from on the animal, and saw the animal before when it was alive. Cuttting up a body however, lets the mind make to many full connections. I bet you could still do it, but it wouldn’t be some thoughtless action as you seem to convey.[/quote]

Well, to me, a deer is no worse than a human. If it’s dead, it’s dead. I would have many many psychological problems irl if i would have to kill a living animal or human being, but a zombie or butchering a dead animal/human - no emotions whatsoever.

When i kill fish, for example, i always speak to them and tell them that i’m sorry, but i have to do it since i have to eat and i beg forgiveness for taking their lives. But after they’re dead, i feel no remorse at all, whatever i do to their bodies. The same goes with animals. I couldn’t stand when my father killed pigs or chickens (we had chicken and pigs at home, just for that purpose, since we live in countryside in an eastern european country), but after they were dead, i could do anything with their bodies without any remorse.

10

hmm ok then. not even the first time?

11

There is no reason to even argue about it. The whole situation is hypothetical, which is a problem in its own if you try to discuss how one would react.

The thing is, when the whole situation is hypothetical, you just think/hope/assume you would react like this. You can’t prove it though, as long as the situation doesn’t come true.
You, Dlightfull, seem to be a person who is accustomed to killing and butchering animals, due to your background. still, killing or butchering a human being - or something that strongly resembles a human being - is a whole other thing, as you feel potentially a lot different than towards an animal. For example, you might start thinking about the person you’re butchering, who they were, what they were doing, if they have family, how they ‘died’/got zombified, if their family/friends are still alive and so on. Automatically, as soon as you think about those things you’d create a connetion of sorts, which makes it harder to just keep butchering the corpse.
Even worse is, if you consider that there is a potential Cure against zombification. That would take the chance of living again from the person youre smashing into bits/butcher, one could argue that this is murder, and the human race (aside from rare exceptions) ‘knows’ its wrong to murder someone. (lets not argue about morality here, its just fact that most civilized nations outlaw murder. And this is in our mindset, even if the nation doesn’t exist anymore.)

On another note though, there are a few tribes in the World which even eat the corpses of the deceased in a ritual, because they believe the corpse binds the soul of the deceased to this world. They free the soul by eating the corpse. Even those tribes usually burn the corpse first though and mix the ashes into their food, they usually don’t butcher the corpse - well, I guess there ARE some tribes which literally butcher the deceased too…

12

I did not mean for this to be an argument… just learning more about how people operate I guess. Since I only know how I personally operate, its nice to get others perspective on…stuff.

Also I never said I was ‘used’ to it. I haven’t skinned or killed that many animals, and its been a long time since I have. But trust me the ‘I just killed Bambi’ feel isn’t a great one, especially if its not a clean kill. I don’t feel to much for pigs though. Bastards even eat each other.

13

[quote=“Kadian, post:11, topic:10141”]You, Dlightfull, seem to be a person who is accustomed to killing and butchering animals, due to your background. still, killing or butchering a human being - or something that strongly resembles a human being - is a whole other thing, as you feel potentially a lot different than towards an animal. For example, you might start thinking about the person you’re butchering, who they were, what they were doing, if they have family, how they ‘died’/got zombified, if their family/friends are still alive and so on. Automatically, as soon as you think about those things you’d create a connetion of sorts, which makes it harder to just keep butchering the corpse.
Even worse is, if you consider that there is a potential Cure against zombification. That would take the chance of living again from the person youre smashing into bits/butcher, one could argue that this is murder, and the human race (aside from rare exceptions) ‘knows’ its wrong to murder someone. (lets not argue about morality here, its just fact that most civilized nations outlaw murder. And this is in our mindset, even if the nation doesn’t exist anymore.)[/quote]

You don’t understand.

For me, human beings are worse than animals, since animals live in harmony with Nature, while human beings (admittedly not all of them) are destroying her (Nature i mean, or Earth, which is the same, basically, in the context i wrote and it’s ‘her’ because Earth has a soul and because Earth is our spiritual mother and Sun is our spiritual father, at least that’s what i believe).

For me, butchering a corpse, be it animal or human, is just like tilling soil. It’s even less problematic than cutting grass or tree (which also have souls and are, thus, alive). It’s like smashing a rock, etc.

You might be right about the cure though (in CDDA world, since in a hypothetical situation in real world i don’t believe there could be a cure to something like zombification). But i’m a really bad roleplayer, so i always think from a real life perspective, rather than from game’s lore perspective.

14

your mistaken. People are not killing nature, we are forcing it to evolve. Mother nature always finds a way to adapt and survive, we are making our own future difficult and ensuring that many will die someday.

Although it won’t matter since mother natures going to up and kick our asses like she did the arrogant dinosaurs. So we won’t even get a chance to kill ourselves.

15

[quote=“Litppunk, post:14, topic:10141”]your mistaken. People are not killing nature, we are forcing it to evolve. Mother nature always finds a way to adapt and survive, we are making our own future difficult and ensuring that many will die someday.

Although it won’t matter since mother natures going to up and kick our asses like she did the arrogant dinosaurs. So we won’t even get a chance to kill ourselves.[/quote]

Yeah, you’re right about the outcome, but we are still trying to destroy mother nature. We will only destroy ourselves, it’s true, nature will adapt and get over it.

16

[quote=“Dlightfull, post:13, topic:10141”]For me, human beings are worse than animals, since animals live in harmony with Nature, while human beings (admittedly not all of them) are destroying her (Nature i mean, or Earth, which is the same, basically, in the context i wrote and it’s ‘her’ because Earth has a soul and because Earth is our spiritual mother and Sun is our spiritual father, at least that’s what i believe).[/quote]Animals don’t live in harmony. They consume every resource available to them, which leads to excess population dying off. You’re confusing an at best temporary equilibrium with some mythical concept of balance.

Not to say I don’t think we shouldn’t manage our use of resources to better preserve our environment, but we’re practically unique in our ability to do that.

There’s no such thing as harmony in nature, if there were nothing would evolve.

17

[quote=“someguy, post:16, topic:10141”]Animals don’t live in harmony. They consume every resource available to them, which leads to excess population dying off. You’re confusing an at best temporary equilibrium with some mythical concept of balance.

Not to say I don’t think we shouldn’t manage our use of resources to better preserve our environment, but we’re practically unique in our ability to do that.

There’s no such thing as harmony in nature, if there were nothing would evolve.[/quote]
^^ this. I second the motion. Although some things live in symbiotic relationships with each other, which is AWESOME but that is not nature existing in harmony, just 2 (MAYBE more) species with complementary evolutions.

18

I spoke with Dlightfull at that point, not with you.

[quote=“Dlightfull, post:13, topic:10141”]You don’t understand.

For me, human beings are worse than animals, since animals live in harmony with Nature, while human beings (admittedly not all of them) are destroying her (Nature i mean, or Earth, which is the same, basically, in the context i wrote and it’s ‘her’ because Earth has a soul and because Earth is our spiritual mother and Sun is our spiritual father, at least that’s what i believe).[/quote]

I’m not going to argue religion with you. I’m looking at it from a scientific standpoint, humans are animals, nothing to discuss there. It is also not necessarily true that we destroy Nature/Earth. We are changing it, and, if you look in the future, we’re changing it into a world were humans won’t be able to survive. ‘Nature’ and the Earth however will survive, all Humans will be dead long before the earth will be destroyed (be it by our sun, a gigantic asteroid or what not.) Nature on the other hand will, at least on earth and earth-like planets, always find a way to survive. Even a Nuclear Holocaust or biological warfare won’t kill nature off, it will change, evolve iuntil it can live and prosper in the given environment.
Of course I still agree that we humans need to change our ways, because nature as we know it is quite beautiful, and I would like to see the human race to survive for as long as possible.

You might think that now. You cannot prove it unless you actually butchered a human being already, which I hope you didn’t. Also, careful with what you proclaim ; as it currently stands, your statements do sound a lot like from a psychopath or Sociopath. I really don’t want offend you, but…there are at least hints of it in your sentences. Your ‘Religion’ probably doesn’t help either to make it sound less extreme.

19

[quote=“Dlightfull, post:13, topic:10141”]For me, human beings are worse than animals, since animals live in harmony with Nature, while human beings (admittedly not all of them) are destroying her (Nature i mean, or Earth, which is the same, basically, in the context i wrote and it’s ‘her’ because Earth has a soul and because Earth is our spiritual mother and Sun is our spiritual father, at least that’s what i believe).

For me, butchering a corpse, be it animal or human, is just like tilling soil. It’s even less problematic than cutting grass or tree (which also have souls and are, thus, alive). It’s like smashing a rock, etc.[/quote]

Yeah da’s some real great bullshit n’ all, but you miiight just be a sociopath with a glossy spiritual veneer… or an edgy teen pretending to be so.

Species that naturally butcher or kill their own without remorse tend to be highly asocial like spiders, snakes or certain sharks… shit with pretty simple brains and predatory behaviors. Humans, being highly social mammals are pretty well hardwired to go through a great deal of stress after killing or mutilating other humans, keeps us from clearing out all of our competition, which logically consists only of other humans at this point. Good decision for the individual, not so much for the species, so it’s a trait with poor species-wide selection.

Soldiers are even intentionally trained trained against trauma and they still end up with a ridiculously high suicide rate (part of the reason why dehumanizing one’s enemy, or entering an altered state of consciousness/identity is almost universally identified as coping methods of successful tribal warfare.)

Furthermore… zombies in our setting still probably have souls of some sort. They’re quite alive, just not human anymore. Zombie corpses arn’t even dead, they just have been temporarily immobilized while the symbiotic blob enforces repairs. If anything by your internal logic your now murdering members of species which has successfully returned mankind to ‘harmony’.

20

Oh well said.