Lengthening of the Early game the return of the Mid game

Game Talk The Drawing Board
61

Binky, degrading the stuff you can craft and removing others does not occur to me as a solution to making the game more challenging. All that would do is make the game excruciatingly boring. Don’t get me wrong, I like a challenge. However stagnation is so much worse. Your suggestions are too take things out and/or water things down. Additionally you’re telling me that people can’t craft items or tools as good (or better than) as items or tools made by people. Thanks, but no. Why don’t you actually offer me a new challenge, a new enemy, something that makes my brand new spanking ‘instadeathgun’ and death-mobile look like a meal on wheels with a toothpick. Show me your creativity.

Or is that too challenging for you?

62

[quote=“ZombieTermite, post:61, topic:4912”]Binky, degrading the stuff you can craft and removing others does not occur to me as a solution to making the game more challenging. All that would do is make the game excruciatingly boring. Don’t get me wrong, I like a challenge. However stagnation is so much worse. Your suggestions are too take things out and/or water things down. Additionally you’re telling me that people can’t craft items or tools as good (or better than) as items or tools made by people. Thanks, but no. Why don’t you actually offer me a new challenge, a new enemy, something that makes my brand new spanking ‘instadeathgun’ and death-mobile look like a meal on wheels with a toothpick. Show me your creativity.

Or is that too challenging for you?[/quote]

Dont think that you bothered to read this thread, because if you had you’ll have realized that while this also strives towards balancing the game, I do not believe that the correct approach is removing items, but that it is rather: make truly good things rare, balance the rest so that you have meaningful choices instead. That said, I am confused by the way you worded your crafting remark. But I do believe there are things you shouldnt be able to craft, like laser guns and high tech items like teleporters, just due to the fact that I dont believe anyone could master the insane amount of advanced theory necessary to make it by himself, now If you collaborated with NPC a scientist team it would be a completely different situation, and also because you probably wouldn’t find the high precision tools needed to make them, but thats just my opinion and I wont push that change

63

[quote=“John Candlebury, post:62, topic:4912”][quote=“ZombieTermite, post:61, topic:4912”]Binky, degrading the stuff you can craft and removing others does not occur to me as a solution to making the game more challenging. All that would do is make the game excruciatingly boring. Don’t get me wrong, I like a challenge. However stagnation is so much worse. Your suggestions are too take things out and/or water things down. Additionally you’re telling me that people can’t craft items or tools as good (or better than) as items or tools made by people. Thanks, but no. Why don’t you actually offer me a new challenge, a new enemy, something that makes my brand new spanking ‘instadeathgun’ and death-mobile look like a meal on wheels with a toothpick. Show me your creativity.

Or is that too challenging for you?[/quote]

Dont think that you bothered to read this thread, because if you had you’ll have realized that while this also strives towards balancing the game, I do not believe that the correct approach is removing items, but that it is rather: make truly good things rare, balance the rest so that you have meaningful choices instead. That said, I am confused by the way you worded your crafting remark. But I do believe there are things you shouldnt be able to craft, like laser guns and high tech items like teleporters, just due to the fact that I dont believe anyone could master the insane amount of advanced theory necessary to make it by himself, now If you collaborated with NPC a scientist team it would be a completely different situation, and also because you probably wouldn’t find the high precision tools needed to make them, but thats just my opinion and I wont push that change[/quote]

Don’t think you bothered to read my post actually. Are you Binky, is Binky this thread?

I have no bone to pick with you, you are fairly reasonable (unlike me).

I’m sorry (I really am) about my fiasco of a first set of posts, I sincerely want to apologize, in person, to Kevin Granade about my unacceptable behavior.

But my last post clearly was not directed at thread as a whole or you, just Binky.

I like your ideas I agree with a lot that you have said.

“just due to the fact that I dont believe anyone could master the insane amount of advanced theory necessary to make it by himself, now If you collaborated with NPC a scientist team it would be a completely different situation, and also because you probably wouldn’t find the high precision tools needed to make them”

That’s great I completely agree. It’s both ‘realistic’, adds more depth and has the potential to be FUN and CHALLENGING.

64

Ohh sorry didnt meant to be overly rude, Its just that your post kinda confused me, I mean you just jumped in here to talk about Binky and I went all do something about this before a derail or something worse happens. Really sorry.

I also forgot to check on clockwork ideas, I really like them, rubble having chances to hide loot seems reasonable enough, but could be considered tedious by some, its however a change that I would approve.

The animals eating stuff is nice too proven that it can work without becoming the loot fairies approach with a different name.

65

i really think adding more challenging enemies would help the game immensely heck i even made a thread with some ideas for it,

66

[quote=“ZombieTermite, post:61, topic:4912”]Binky, degrading the stuff you can craft and removing others does not occur to me as a solution to making the game more challenging. All that would do is make the game excruciatingly boring. Don’t get me wrong, I like a challenge. However stagnation is so much worse. Your suggestions are too take things out and/or water things down. Additionally you’re telling me that people can’t craft items or tools as good (or better than) as items or tools made by people. Thanks, but no. Why don’t you actually offer me a new challenge, a new enemy, something that makes my brand new spanking ‘instadeathgun’ and death-mobile look like a meal on wheels with a toothpick. Show me your creativity.

Or is that too challenging for you?[/quote]

No need to be a a dick about it - that was clearly uncalled for when we’re all just trying to strive for a better game. It’s called a difference of opinion. Also, most of the things that ‘are made by people’ are made by huge industrial processes, not just a man, a forge and a few weeks of knowledge. Your idea of infinite escalation would work if we had a really good time system, but most players don’t want (or didn’t seem to want last time it was brought up) a sort of time cap in which stronger and stronger monsters are spawned over time.

To respond to your point anyway, I’m not saying that things should be removed from the game forever or that you can’t craft useful things, it’s about pushing the player to explore and enjoy the game, rather than sitting around in relative safety grinding up skills and building super OP weapons/armour out of basic stuff. Yeah, they might enjoy that, but if you can build/do everything in one play through, what’s the replay value?

One of the key problems (after looking through the recipes) is actually the realism - pretty much everything in the game can be made by so many alternative ingredients (which it may make sense to be able too in reality) that it becomes too easy to find the parts for pretty much everything. Again, this is about balance, you want the easy stuff (which you’ll have to make loads of) easy to do and plenty available, but the higher level stuff should require some searching for.

I also strongly second the idea of removing sci-fi/super weapons from crafting, they should be rare loot, rather than something you can assemble after burning through one town.

67

@John Yeah it’s ok,

Anyways as far as ‘suspension of disbelief’ goes

I know this is hard to stomach, but significantly limiting random military spawns should break someones ‘suspension of disbelief’ far more than finding a lot of U.S. troop corpses armed to the teeth. If there were major military operations going on, and you should think there would be considering the state of things, then were going to run into squads (8 or more soldiers) or fire teams (4 or more) and there should be a lot more in, or en route to, any of the population centers in your randomly generated world.
The corpses should still be carrying gun’s and appropriate ammunition for those guns. They should at least have a full set of appropriate protective gear. They would be carrying supplies, and something to carry those supplies with. The method of transportation should not, or should, be far off.
This would change depending on how such a squad/fireteam came to its demise, and visual evidence would come a long way, there should be blood stains, spent casings, damaged clothing.

This would also lead to the further assumption that whatever killed them was badass enough to take out a full squad armed with full automatic weapons, or something with overwhelming numbers and strength. Currently the zombies faced in the game can be taken out by a, buff as fuck mind you (or not), shower victim armed with shoe, much less a fully automatic weapon. What needs to really be focused on is the enemies (not that balancing of fire arms should be ignored that’s important)

68

[quote=“Binky, post:66, topic:4912”][quote=“ZombieTermite, post:61, topic:4912”]Binky, degrading the stuff you can craft and removing others does not occur to me as a solution to making the game more challenging. All that would do is make the game excruciatingly boring. Don’t get me wrong, I like a challenge. However stagnation is so much worse. Your suggestions are too take things out and/or water things down. Additionally you’re telling me that people can’t craft items or tools as good (or better than) as items or tools made by people. Thanks, but no. Why don’t you actually offer me a new challenge, a new enemy, something that makes my brand new spanking ‘instadeathgun’ and death-mobile look like a meal on wheels with a toothpick. Show me your creativity.

Or is that too challenging for you?[/quote]

I also strongly second the idea of removing sci-fi/super weapons from crafting, they should be rare loot, rather than something you can assemble after burning through one town.[/quote]

but what if your character is some super smart scientist guy ya i think you would be able to craft them. or maybe you can find blue print for them in a lab.

69

[quote=“Binky, post:66, topic:4912”][quote=“ZombieTermite, post:61, topic:4912”]Binky, degrading the stuff you can craft and removing others does not occur to me as a solution to making the game more challenging. All that would do is make the game excruciatingly boring. Don’t get me wrong, I like a challenge. However stagnation is so much worse. Your suggestions are too take things out and/or water things down. Additionally you’re telling me that people can’t craft items or tools as good (or better than) as items or tools made by people. Thanks, but no. Why don’t you actually offer me a new challenge, a new enemy, something that makes my brand new spanking ‘instadeathgun’ and death-mobile look like a meal on wheels with a toothpick. Show me your creativity.

Or is that too challenging for you?[/quote]

No need to be a a dick about it - that was clearly uncalled for when we’re all just trying to strive for a better game. It’s called a difference of opinion. Also, most of the things that ‘are made by people’ are made by huge industrial processes, not just a man, a forge and a few weeks of knowledge. Your idea of infinite escalation would work if we had a really good time system, but most players don’t want (or didn’t seem to want last time it was brought up) a sort of time cap in which stronger and stronger monsters are spawned over time.

To respond to your point anyway, I’m not saying that things should be removed from the game forever or that you can’t craft useful things, it’s about pushing the player to explore and enjoy the game, rather than sitting around in relative safety grinding up skills and building super OP weapons/armour out of basic stuff. Yeah, they might enjoy that, but if you can build/do everything in one play through, what’s the replay value?

One of the key problems (after looking through the recipes) is actually the realism - pretty much everything in the game can be made by so many alternative ingredients (which it may make sense to be able too in reality) that it becomes too easy to find the parts for pretty much everything. Again, this is about balance, you want the easy stuff (which you’ll have to make loads of) easy to do and plenty available, but the higher level stuff should require some searching for.

I also strongly second the idea of removing sci-fi/super weapons from crafting, they should be rare loot, rather than something you can assemble after burning through one town.[/quote]

Look I get that I’m a dick, I don’t want to be but I have reasons.

I’m getting (increasingly) frustrated with you because you want to remove features that make CDDA very different from a lot of others games and simulations. And you keep suggesting that our @'s be bound by realism, in a game about zombies bionics and mutagens. You really are the definition of a “stop having fun guy.”

You have yet to disprove this.

70

I second the notion of buffing enemies, balancing items is good and all but let us not forget the enemies.

71

[quote=“ZombieTermite, post:69, topic:4912”]Look I get that I’m a dick, I don’t want to be but I have reasons.

I’m getting (increasingly) frustrated with you because you want to remove features that make CDDA very different from a lot of others games and simulations. And you keep suggesting that our @'s be bound by realism, in a game about zombies bionics and mutagens. You really are the definition of a “stop having fun guy.”

You have yet to disprove this.[/quote]
depends on what is “fun” for you. If you think fun is making god armor by breaking the windows in the starting shelter and running a few steps outside to find guns laying around, then rofl-stomping anything that the game throws at you… then roguelikes aren’t for you. i’d rather play shoot-fish-in-a-barell-with-a grenade-launcher simulator if the games continues on this path.

72

Aaand https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/5822
Has been merged. This adds 30 - 20 HP to most zombies and +100 to the hulk. Given that, for example, the regular zombie had 50 health, this is a huge step towards making monsters more threatening.

It’s times like these that makes me wish common “OP” and medieval stuff would get mod-manager’d and thus could be toggled on and off at a whim.

73

[quote=“Ferodaktyl, post:71, topic:4912”][quote=“ZombieTermite, post:69, topic:4912”]Look I get that I’m a dick, I don’t want to be but I have reasons.

I’m getting (increasingly) frustrated with you because you want to remove features that make CDDA very different from a lot of others games and simulations. And you keep suggesting that our @'s be bound by realism, in a game about zombies bionics and mutagens. You really are the definition of a “stop having fun guy.”

You have yet to disprove this.[/quote]
depends on what is “fun” for you. If you think fun is making god armor by breaking the windows in the starting shelter and running a few steps outside to find guns laying around, then rofl-stomping anything that the game throws at you… then roguelikes aren’t for you. i’d rather play shoot-fish-in-a-barell-with-a grenade-launcher simulator if the games continues on this path.[/quote]
I hope that’s not what you think I define as ‘fun’, because if that’s the case you are deeply mistaken

When I say I want my character to have a rail gun, I want said character to spend an inhospitable 365 game days (or IRL days), or more, learning how to build one. Likely dying many times in the process in often hilarious ways. I want a reason to build a rail gun, an excuse, an enemy that would more than warrant such a weapon. I want the said world to chew me up and spit me out trying to build my dream weapons. I want that reward to be EARNED, not have it fucking handed to me in some special random drop in some special dungeon. I want it to be built by my characters hands.
And then die again, to an enemy I have never encountered or suspected: So I can find a reason to start building power armor, all the while not trying to starve or freeze to death, but dying again and again anyways.

I don’t want to start out a god, I want to spend endless hours and game days becoming one, and then finding out even that’s not enough.
I know what a ROUGELIKE is
I know what FUN is

tl;dr
I WANT TO BE ABLE TO BUILD MY OWN POWER ARMOR, HAND HELD RAIL-GUN, AND WHATEVER BRAND OF FLAMING KATANA WHILE STILL DIEING HORRIBLY, A LOT, IS THAT TOO COMPLEX FOR YOU!?

74

I think I would be able to take all sides involved in this argument a lot more seriously if they would learn how to spell ‘rogue-like’.

75

WHAT

I kinda liked having the zombies at 50 health, but I’m ok with it.

76

Roguelike

There, look I spelled it for you, sorry that was so key for you to take things seriously? (I honestly don’t think you would either way, you’re not the type)

By the way I would also take you more seriously if you actually brought things to the table in discussions, but that would make you adequate right?.

I am having a majority of my buttons pressed today, people are having loads of fun with it too. Glad I’m making someone happy.

Also there’s usually not a dash in between rogue and like.

77

This is gonna be a long post because I’m addressing several folks.

Well, this thread is not about making the early game any more difficult. I think most people agree that the early game is already well balanced. But once you get hold of some ammo, a weapon and a car there is simply no longer any challenge at all. It should be more difficult to get to that point, and that is what this thread is all about.

As John said, you hit the nail on the head.

1) Items should have a chance of being overlooked based on your perception, their volume, and the location they're placed. You shouldn't automatically spot every matchbook in a room full of rubble (or every pistol in the middle of a helicopter crash) Thoroughly searching a location should be possible but should take time. Some of this already exists with the current "multiple items in a square" stuff- if there's rubble in a square it should also hide things in it.
  1. Animals should eat things. Food in particular. Things are smart enough to bash through doors, why doesn’t that dog/moose/racoon/bear eat the cereal sitting on this counter? They seem to be pretty set on eating/attacking the character.

Very good points both.
I’ll add that animals (and possibly zombies) should seek shelter from acid rain, so that acid rain is not FREE FOOD and NO MORE ZOMBIES AROUND. My ideas include: making trees give protection and making burrowing animals hide during acid rain.

A good solution in that case would be to reduce your hitting chances when zombies are very close, perhaps justified by the zombie erratic and fast movements and instead move the "golden spot" between accuracy and damage a few tiles away from your character, so at least you would have to take terrain into account and leave a reasonable distance from your target if you want the best possible result
That's a very good idea - no more shooting zombies 1 tile away.

Also, there is a PR on Git which reduces headshot damage significantly, both ending the turret headshot instakills and making ranged combat less powerful at higher skill levels.

i really think adding more challenging enemies would help the game immensely heck i even made a thread with some ideas for it,
I proposed some more challenging enemies in another thread:
zommoose, zombie spiders, zombie jabberwock, mutated animals of all sorts (giant rat, giant zombie rat) wolf-moose (kudos to the guy on IRC who described a NPC trying to fight a moose with lupine serum)
78

Glad you agree with the zombie boost, I (and some more experienced players I know) did play test it quite a bit and found it didn’t shake the balance too much.

I (and I’m sure everyone else) wants that too - I completely agree. I don’t mind if I get it as a hard fought for drop after I’ve slogged through 6 dungeon floors or something, but I want to have earned it. Currently, you don’t earn anything - in the first week you can become almost invincible, and that’s no fun. The problem with crafting currently is that it’s way too easy to train up and build super OP stuff. The devs/players have said that they don’t want materials to be artificially scarce, so if that’s the case their needs to be a limit on what can be crafted, otherwise you can quickly grind up your skills and make whatever. Anyway, you really do need to stop being so confrontational, no matter the reason.

Ranged weapons balance:
This seems like the biggest request, so I’m going to start a new topic on it.