I have no say in what gets added or removed, but I don’t see how seperating arrow recipies, individually reloading mags, and vitamin system added anything more than extra tedium.
Nested containers was good tho.
2 Likes
You call it “tedium”, someone else calls it “level of details I always wanted to see in game”.
3 Likes
Why?
Seperated arrows just adds another layer of RNG.
Individual rounds and mag loading is good ‘in theory’, but without batch loading mags and other shortcuts, only adds UI clunkiness.
Vitamin system, well, it’s not like there’s accurate vitamin lists of every food. Or what cooking does to it. And the symptoms of over/under vitamins, when implemented, will just add survivors coming down with obscure diseases and symptoms. I mean most people know about scurvy, but other than that, they’re pretty screwed.
It’s a open source project so if somebody want that level of detail and is willing to put in the work then there isn’t that much to stop them. Since it doesn’t effect game balance much the community will generly say “sure”. Combine this with the focus on realism, both the good parts (being able to craft anything you reasonably could in real life and if you could immagine a way to deal with problems in real life it will probably be implemented into the game) and the bad parts (not just worrying about zombies and starvation but also about having a balanced diet and not dying do to some deadly or debilitating medical condition), and you get what will be VERY detailed game mechanics.
(hopefully it never gets to dwarffortress levels of detailed but i don’t think anyone is willing to implement that)
I’ve wanted vitamins in a game for pretty much forever. As a biology nerd it always felt like something that was sorely overlooked in survival games that allowed you to survive by just eating metric tons of jerky.
It’s a little disingenuous to assume no one enjoys the realistic changes just because you don’t.
6 Likes
Also, keep in mind that this is a work in progress game. If it ruins balance in an objectively tedius manner it will be changed. If it’s tedius to some, like the gun variety for example, a mod will likely be added to reduce the tedium, like the generic guns mod.
What do you mean? Why other people could like the feature you personally don’t like? Because people are different, I guess.
That’s the problem. As far as I can tell, you don’t like not the individually reloading magazines mechanics per se, but instead you don’t like the lack of convenience when working with this mechanics. Would you like this mechanics more if we add a new “reload all mags in my inventory with appropriate ammo” hotkey?
Nobody ever said that magazines is a completely finished and polished feature. It would definitely benefit from several UI and UX improvements.
I kinda like that idea myself. We can auto sort stuff, and automate certain other tedious tasks to a degree, so this would be a good quality of life improvement.
To the OP:
The way I see it, the game isn’t a commercial project and doesn’t aim to get as wide audience as possible. Like the commercial game most of the time do. Which means things like “lack of tedium” are a secondary concern. However secondary does NOT mean a non-issue, just not the main concern. What the people contributing to the game want (Kevin obviously included), is among other things, realism. And you have your answer as to “why”.
I share your opinion (for the most part). However the game is so great that some changes towards realism that is tedious and mostly pointless from gameplay perspective - at the moment - wont change it. And perhaps with time loading individual bullets or the vitamin system will be actually working/important to the gameplay. I live in hope…
And no one stops anyone from making a fork for cataclysm, if one would be inclined to do so. I don’t have the skill and I wouldn’t even want to do it even if i had the skill and the time. But you or anyone else are welcome to try. I would gladly follow a fork even if ultimately it would end worse, just to be able to compare different design philosophies. It’s always interested me and could be beneficial even to the main line.
2 Likes
When I’ve started to add new functions and other stuff to the game, it lacked a lot of auto-functions. One that upset me the most was, that I can’t just designate an area to fill in with a floor, a row of wall or mow the grass. This made testing more painfull than it had to be. Next up the list was some way to automatically sort items (I’m a hoarder, even in test worlds).
I’ve planned to write up a bot program at some point to do that stuff for me and maybe even integrate it into the game if it was good enough. I never got to it.
Now we have Zones for automatic sorting, automatic (de-/)construction, automatic butchering, auto farming, auto vehicle deconstruction/repair, …
I’m positive there is going to be a lot more automated. And I’m really thankfull for that, especially for not being the one who had to code up all of that 
.
And as many others already stated: There’s probably going to be mods that simplify things, like the arrows and removing the vitamin system. And I’m sure there’s going to be one that will remove gun fouling at some point (as this discussion did start over there).
For the game to grow, it will need first to turn more complex before it gets easier again. Otherwise it would just stagnate at the point it already is and nothing can be added to it, because only a single change will make it more tedious at its own. And, as you may see from my experience, there is constantly work done to make it easier, and at the same time some other to make it more realistic.
2 Likes
Eh, I like some of the new realism like mags, but removing stuff from the game purely for realism sucks, and I think systems should be implemented not because they’re realistic, but because they’re fun.
2 Likes
More like I dread loading 6 mags and looting guns for ammo because it takes so many keypresses for a simple task. Or keeping a stock of loaded mags.
Honestly liked JA2’s magic ammobox/magazine system, and unloaded guns and mag left on the floor. It’s enough detail, without being too complex.
And having to manually 'd’rop every single item you unload because unloading stores both gun and mag in your inventory, is quite the annoyance. It came up really badly when I’m low on inv space and in a dodgy situation, then the system drops stuff on the floor cuz low inv space… argh.
Why not stand over an item, multi-'U’nload and then multi-'g’rab it later?
And multi-'l’oad and multi-'W’ear too, it would really help UX. Unless it’s in Advanced Inventory which I skipped, since I don’t know how it works.
There’s also the issue of single-use items.
Like activating specifically the washboard item instead of a ‘wash with X’ dialog:
- time: X, slowed by Y
- nearby water: true
- nearby soap: true
- scrub: rag: true
- wash item:
– a
– b
So you can clean things with just soap, it just takes longer.
Which could be used in a ‘cook with X’ dialog.
- nearby fire: true
- cooking vessel: pot: cooking 2
- ingredients:
– a
– b
– c - result:
– x
– y
Which might improve cooking and shorten the recipie list. Now you don’t need seperate ‘PB&H’, ‘PB&J’ items, just ‘bread’ containing x quantity of whatever.
Or ‘roast meat’ containing honey, salt, pepper - that increases enjoyability stat etc.
Or you can’t wear rags/towel/camisole on your face, like rags on face in NeoScavenger, because of legacy UI issues.
Which causes item bloat, and player item hoarding in inventory and bases, since items only have 1 use.
All of this was implemented in this way not because someone just loves the additional keypresses, but instead because it was simpler to implement.
You are welcome to rework all interfaces you don’t like. Everyone will only praise you for UI and UX improvements.
4 Likes