Less wimpy winter!

[EkarusRyndren]

[quote=“prytoclasm, post:40, topic:3372”][quote=“Kevin Granade, post:38, topic:3372”]Hmm, that might actually be a bit broken now, hmm. We reigned in the “no stacking penalty” thing for fitted + 0 enc clothing to be “very low stacking penalty”, and I haven’t looked at how survivable deep ice labs are after that.

Basically you need to wear everything you possibly can, which means layering and warmth/enc is more important than total warmth. Also yea, you’re going to end up being heavily encumbered. Also you might even have to descend for short jaunts into the lowest level, and head back up to warm back up. Another option is fire.[/quote]

Yeah, I know. But torso/arm/leg encumberment of 10+ = evil. Even if it’s only a Zombie or Zombie scientist. It’s not always the coldness that kills you so deep, it’s the encumberment. Main issues so far for me are hands and mouth. Dexterity penalties are evil.

And not all labs are freezers. Some got nice temps even 8 stories down.

Next part is: running up from -96°C ‘comfortable’ to +30°C summer weather = !FUN!.

In the end it’s all about organisation. But tbh, not really much worth down so far.

All in all, you should not change it so that you can easily wander around in such cold environments. Keep it so that you can make short runs and all is fine. Risk vs. reward may be off all the time, but that doesn’t matter.[/quote]

It just dawned on me that the Rivet made that winterized survivor suit, so that might help too XD

[Rivet]

It just dawned on me that the Rivet made that winterized survivor suit, so that might help too XD

I’m glad to see that somebody caught on to that one.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Snip

+1 to negative 25F

Mmm, but how would it actually play out in-game? Unless we can encounter empty cities, we’ll already know the zombies are there- no surprise. Plus they’re still ‘regular’ zombies- by the time winter rolls around, they don’t present a challenge.
I’m a +1 for a drastically altered gameplay in winter.

[John_Candlebury]

+1 to making Cataclysm Cold and Dark a reality

[Sharklaser]

Wiinter could be other kind of challenge. While there are no nearly as many active threats as in other seasons - the system is this: If everything goes upto the plans then you are not having much difficulties conquering the winter, you can outrun everything with skis/snowshoes. It is not “hard” season typically - if youre prepared with neccesities and everything goes upto the plan.

BUT… if things start going downhill then it happens fast, wintertime “cascades problems” much more easily than other seasons. Should you for some reason come wet you come also cold. Should you come cold you slow down - should you slow down you get hit a few time by enemies and lose the insulating clothing - cold sets in more, you get slower and very soon you are dead either by slow horde or freeze. Everything has “food penalty” - you consume a lot more energy during wintertime. You explore too far with too few supplies - you become hungry… problems again start cascading.

This way - while theoretically exploring urban areas would be easy and relatively safe - it always has possibility of problems topping on each other. Basically winter is “easier” as abstact but punishes severely for mistakes.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Nah, you should always be able to recover from a mistake- no one wants to get to winter only to die because they let themselves get hungry. Stupid mistakes should hurt, not kill.

[EkarusRyndren]

Nah, you should always be able to recover from a mistake- no one wants to get to winter only to die because they let themselves get hungry. Stupid mistakes should hurt, not kill.

Well by that logic catching the flu and being unable to get food between the sleep/recover cycle shouldn’t be a death sentence XD I can’t help but agree that a mistake before winter be deadly, sort of a hump to get over, or even a challenge for some?

[GrizzlyAdamz]

I don’t know the reference to flu, so I’m probably sticking my foot in my mouth, but wouldn’t that only afflict brand-spanking-new survivors? I can’t imagine anyone not making a stockpile of non-perishables.

Vs a scavving trip that kills you because you stayed out a bit too late and it snowballed (pun) from there. It sounds like it would be a cheap, “surprise!” death- specially if the mechanics change only for winter. You’d have to learn from trial & error when the rules change, and couple that with having survived for 40+ days already & you’ll be instilling a lot of butthurt.

[kevin.granade]

Once winter is interesting enough for it to be worthwhile, we’ll make the time of year when the game starts adjustable, so you can start just before winter and learn the ropes.
Also, hard mode, game starts in the dead of winter.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Also, death mode, game starts in the dead of winter.

FTFY

[EkarusRyndren]

I don’t know the reference to flu, so I’m probably sticking my foot in my mouth, but wouldn’t that only afflict brand-spanking-new survivors? I can’t imagine anyone not making a stockpile of non-perishables.

When you get the flu (Or even the common cold in some cases) it mostly means sitting around recovering, stuffing food in your mouth while you can then going back to sleep. I’ve also noticed that if you’re recovering from a bite wound it means not sleeping at all until it heals (Assuming you had to use Antibiotics) because the bite wound wakes you up, eventually resulting in quite a lot of sleep/eat/sleep again cycles assuming you survive the bite wound recovery process.

[vache]

snip… you get hit a few time by enemies and lose the insulating clothing - cold sets in more …snip

It’d be interesting if warmth and bash/cut armor were based off of armor damage to an extent, more reason to keep your gear in good shape and reinforce. Plus, realism. A shirt with holes in it probably provides less warmth than one without holes.

[Shoes]

[quote=“Sharklaser, post:45, topic:3372”]snip… you get hit a few time by enemies and lose the insulating clothing - cold sets in more …snip

It’d be interesting if warmth and bash/cut armor were based off of armor damage to an extent, more reason to keep your gear in good shape and reinforce. Plus, realism. A shirt with holes in it probably provides less warmth than one without holes.[/quote]

I remember trying to link clothing condition to warm, as it should be. I forget what stopped me from doing it. I should look again.

[keldoclock]

Also, hard mode, game starts in the dead of winter.

In Unreal World , the hardest game start is in November with a knife and a few articles of clothing, plus random injuries. Gameplay mainly consists of huddling around a fire, freezing, and starving. If you manage to delay your death until spring (by trading wooden crafts for tools/clothes, collecting berries, fishing, and hunting squirrels) you are pretty much good to go.

I wish there was some way for a game to be very hard for the entirety of the game, instead of starting hard and getting easy as problems are solved.

[kevin.granade]

It’s actually fairly easy in an open-world game like this, you just need to be careful to give warning signs so people can avoid the really dangerous areas until they’re ready for them.

A super obvious late game for cata is just a city center, there’d legitimately be groups of thousands of zombies wandering around.

Another one is fortified NPC areas.

Labs should have tougher resistance in general, as it is they’re a relatively safe area AND they have tons of stuff. If nothing else they should have zombified personell. Later on some labs might sill be operational, now that’d be a challenge

[vache]

I think the game needs more of the really rough enemies, and more enemies with ranged attacks. NPCs will probably fill those roles, but until then, we need more enemies like tripod bots and tankbots around. I have still never seen a tankbot in 4 versions. I actually had a thought for a depot or a shipyard or something full of metal shipping containers, and there’s a tripod bot outside blasting everything with fire, and you have to dodge in and out of the storage containers and take pot shots at it to kill it. Anyway, more security bots and stuff like that in the labs would be good. But this is all off topic to this discussion and should probably go to a new thread.

[John_Candlebury]

In my mind, the structure of labs need to be totally reworked, make them look like some actual high security facilities and make their interior rooms have more sense (they should be divided in sectors and have more corridors between them).

Bonus points if they have pitfalls gigantic open spaces, interior monorail systems pointless fail-unsafe mechanisms, crowbars, and the possibility of blowing up a the emergency nuke under the facility just for fun

[Birdie]

Dead of winter, hobo profession, max city size only.
Bring it on.

[Baltazargompka]

[quote=“John Candlebury, post:57, topic:3372”]In my mind, the structure of labs need to be totally reworked, make them look like some actual high security facilities and make their interior rooms have more sense (they should be divided in sectors and have more corridors between them).

Bonus points if they have pitfalls gigantic open spaces, interior monorail systems pointless fail-unsafe mechanisms, crowbars, and the possibility of blowing up a the emergency under the facility just for fun[/quote]

Currently laboratory is a large swatch of boredom, stuffed with rewarding resources. I think you should make them somewhat less spacious. Maybe even cramped, but threat-heavy.
An event or semi-event gameplay in laboratories would be just fine. For example, your character enters location - uber reinforced door shuts tightly behind your back, cutting escape route and you have to fight your way through.
Make them more diverse, both in layout and theme. Biological weapons faciliy, stuffed with mutants and exotic diseases. Chemical facility. Droid factory. High energy experiments facility etc.

In general you should add more difficult to reach, mysterious and dangerous locations to encourage careful and planed exploration, because, currently, it quickly becomes a boring and repetitive endeavour.

And yes. I really want a realistic snow in cata.

[DataTrans]

I’d actually very very much like adjustable seasons, starting right before winter would be great. Back onto the topic at hand: Survivors, NPCs, what-have-you, in winter, it should have a medium-ish spawn rate (If you have random NPCs on) to find frozen to death NPCs in winter gear, snowshoes and the like, and without any food. Forgive me if I come off sounding confusing,