I’ve noticed that during the last couple of years the complexity of crafting has steadily increased. Not only are the recipes more complex, but there are far more intermediate steps and required proficiencies for a given end product.
When I started there wasn’t a proficiency system or even one for weariness. These are good additions in principle, but with the ever-complicating recipes, crafting stuff has become much more tedious and time consuming. Still, I don’t think it’s more fun than it used to be.
Maybe I’m alone with my opinion here, but do we really, really need welding rods and steel with different carbon concentrations and realistic chemistry?
If you ask me, the effort would be better spent in making more end game content. There is still a notable lack of closure. When you finally feel “ready” to take on the world, there are no challenges left and you just have to quit playing. That’s quite anticlimactic. I think we’d need a chance to challenge the other dimension and go out guns blazing =)
I mean… I kind of agree? I tend to think of whether an increase in complexity is good or bad by the metric of “how many more button presses does this cost me?” Generally, if something adds complexity while keeping balance and doesn’t require more button presses, then I’m happy to have it. Welding rods are kind of in this category; they increase the complexity while their requirement is just that you find them and hoard them (something you’re doing to most items anyways). I agree that some of these additions recently have been a bit… unnecessary. Crafting recipes are already pretty complex, and the few steps I need to take through the crafting menu to get to my end product the better imo. Still, more complexity is something I appreciate for the most part.
What it does is add immersion in some areas, make them more sensible in the sense that they’re much closer to irl requirements, not really sure about the fun part. It does add tedioum though, but not really much, like the welding rods, what that did was just make me have bases near the Refugee Center always now and maybe add a bit of value to mercs.
In the end fun isn’t the point of those details, even if some will find them fun, realism is the goal. Although it would certainly help to have some more missions to do, but that’ll suffer with their requirements for details too I’m afraid, since they’d probably add time constraints to it that’ll make it realistic since the world doesn’t wait for you before it turns, but that’s just CDDA at this point for you. It doesn’t care much about you if your problem doesn’t align with what they want, most of the time anyways.
Fun vs Complexity is a false dichotomy, everyone wants more qol and less keypress. Adding features is easier than fixing UX so contributors are more likely to add stuff than to improve UX. But better UX is obviously very welcome. Forcing people to stop expending features and only work on UX would kill the project as people would just stop contributing.
Fun is a subjective concept and not helpfull to discuss, there’s no absolute unit of fun that we could have more or less of.
Endgame is by definition the moment where there s nothing left to do, any content added push endgame later and doesn’t expend it.
People work on wathever they want there s no way to force random volunteers to work on something specific.
I think there are many good points here. There are good reasons for why CDDA is what it is. And it’s true complexity doesn’t equal “not fun”. In many cases increased complexity can lead to better gameplay if executed skillfully. However, there are also some notions I’m not ready to agree with.
While fun is subjective, it is a pretty general truth that tedium is not fun. Also, people making commercial games go to great lengths to find out what the audience hypothetically playing their games would enjoy. It’s not like it’s impossible to predict what would be fun on average and use it as a guideline.
Also, noting that endgame is where the game ends is not an excuse to have an uninspiring or bad ending - or not even have the chance for one. Maybe a better term would be something like “max level content”. In many games the game proper only begins when the character is fully developed. I think with CDDA the lack of challenges for advanced characters and having no endings with any satisfactory feeling of closure is a serious problem.
I realize, of course, that volunteers are not employees. I still believe the project coordinators could encourage the type of work that actually increases fun and enjoyable playtime and prevent addition of content that does little else than add chores and time sinks.
It’s a sandbox there is no set goal for you and there never will be.
If you want more high level content there are about two ways to get it. The best way is to make it yourself and second to that making detailed enough feature request that someone else interested can implement it easily.
The fact that we can’t constrain contributor is a very important point here, I’m 98% sure that there never will be any thing to push contributors to make more high level content.
Hmm… yea, I guess the voluntary development structure is challenging. I remember that making what you want yourself has been the stock answer for as long as I have frequented the boards. I never quite understood, though, why there couldn’t be a selection of internal goals in the game. Hard to see what would be lost by allowing it.
I really love the game. I’ve spent hundreds of hours with it and will probably continue to do so occasionally. My intention was not to merely criticize its shortcomings, but rather express my concerns and provide my 2 cp about what I think the game would need to become better in the future.
I don’t have a clear vision what specifically should be done nor the resources to put one together. I can’t instruct a developer better than this, let alone take the time to start developing the game myself.
I guess the main problem is that no money is involved. Devs don’t get paid and players don’t pay for what they get. Maybe it’d be worth starting some kind of incentive program. I’d happily donate a couple of hundred bucks a year if I knew the money was going toward dedicated and professional game development.
There is an incentive program: It’s possible to post bounties for the implementation of various specific tasks (i.e. the goals have to be small enough and clear enough to allow an easy determination of when someone has completed the task). However, I don’t think it’s used much, and I would expect most contributors not to be particularly interested in them, but rather interested in contributing what they themselves consider interesting/important.
There are no endgoal because that’s not the design of the game, there is nothing to win, you can only survive.
But we’re adding quest chains, so expending that and putting some really difficult/involved quests at the end of those chains is welcome. There could maybe be some epilogue where you join the exodii and leave with them for the next appocalypse but we re still far from that in term of content
That sounds very much like what I was hoping for. Looking forward to that.
I don’t see a problem with survival being the ultimate goal. Would just be nice to have something you actually need a mobile laser fortress and a zillion rocket lauchers for. Like e.g. destroying an enemy super base, which has been launching constant attacks against you.
I like the detail, but I don’t want to grind for anything. If the characters start with a useful set of skills and some of the npcs have complimentary skills then the game can be about building a functional community. The tedium I keep encountering is when I am expected to execute every step and climb a tech tree first. Limitations and details are great, but shifting lists around is pretty dull. The details are plotlines, but the only interesting parts of the story are the parts where something can actually go wrong. Combat, conversations, crafting at the design level, planning fortifications, etc. Once I define a plan, I don’t want to lay all the bricks. It’s a game. If I need something, great. Hunting for it is fun. Once I find it, dragging it home through safe passages is just busywork.
You are not alone. But CDDA exists for players AND developers. Developers have their fun, and players benefit. Mostly. Proficiency and weariness were probably fun for some developers to install. Some coder had a ball generating new steps to making the same vehicle. And there are enough players who enjoy it. Some players love it.
An eternally-alpha game with a team of enthused developers is going to have lots of changes, and there will be changes that will leave some players behind. I am one of those players. Newer releases have not been as much fun for you or me as they have been for other players. That’s the way things worked out.
Part of what is going on here is that earlier releases were, at the time, some of our best-ever gaming experiences. Extraordinary fun. What are the odds that an eternally-alpha game could sustain that experience? Years later I still break out my favorite release. But many players here, who don’t share my history, would be disappointed with my favorite.
Jandof, it’s good that you register your opinion. Thanks for doing that. However, if your preferences generally do resonate with mine, then it would be good to begin looking around at other gaming options. Here, gaming that you and I define as tedium is a significant part of the target gaming experience. Developers like it. Players like it.
Keep checking new CDDA stable releases just in case you find new fun, maybe fun that catches you by surprise.