Coming to think of morale and stacked bonuses, it makes me remember the “hardships” of norse berserkers.
With promises of land and riches, they went on these overseas conquests and for an uncertain ammount of time. It was pretty much the same thing back home whereas various clans made pacts and battled for dominance. Some male-dominance bull***t, eh? I’ve been thinking on those aspects of mind that make a great warrior and thus, a survivor.
Sure, the devs could tweak the current morale system so it doesn’t punch the bits of positive morale values into oblivion, doing so by proposing that crafting, construction and repairing your road-rig is just about the same as spending your days bashing 20k zombie heads, leaving a bloody trail of your advancement throughout New England. Or just leave the system intact, compromising over the consent saying the account of civilized habits is denied because luxury items and services are simply no more to be seen.
On the other hand, one could perceive a succesful survivor as a sum of all his deeds. Did he/she choose the safer path, staying out of harm’s way whilst scraping the fat of the land with midnight supply-runs, hoping to never face the real perils of the after-cataclysm wastes? Or, our hero is perhaps going to great lengths to maintain his/her sense of safety, embracing can-do spirit throughout every day after Day-Z? Believe it or not, this gave me an idea. (!)
Let’s make two columns before naming all the rows by those morale buffs:
1. Unwind
The real stress of survival, honing skills like melee and dodge devotedly, sustaining injury and recovering from infection whilst forming a new sense of self through surivalism. In order to shake off all the bumps and bruises, both body and spirit need to relax and get somewhat distracted. If there was a treshold for plainly stacking morale bonuses it would be because of this - it’s only the treshold, found in the positive range, gets higher according to the abovementioned hardships. The proposed value should decline fairly quickly if the “need” isn’t satisfied, leaving enough space for a different kind of play (rest, a change of pace, honing different skills).
2. Entertainment
Even though profoundly sought after, all the small (and sometimes really expensive) things that are told to be of great value in life are somewhat habit-forming. You need to take a rest from old games on your computer, your favorite soda tastes bland lately, even that hot-tub you’ve been into seems kinda boring. Once charged, your “batteries” that fuel all the enthusiasm you put into achievement and ego-satisfaction cannot fit any more of that fun-juice, making you indifferent towards all that leisure-bit you’ve been into. The proposed treshold, and you can feel it, is kinda low making it hard for you to just lay around, eating pizzas and watching TV all day long. In this (bottom-low) case all those values above the treshold decimate rapidly, so that extra bag of candy or that Spiderman comic you found at the store really don’t mean much to you.
But proving yourself you’re up to the task just might.
Honestly, I don’t think more super-buffs to morale would make this game any better. But if the devs found a way to “support” an aspiring survivor and motivate him/her to explore the Cataclysm world even more, I think that would just do the trick for us.
