One of the major things that’s annoyed me and killed my immersion recently, was when clearing out a regional school and killing ~500 zombie children in a single day. I realized that mood is effectively pointless to maintain. In my eyes, one of the major themes of a zombie-infested apocalypse, is in keeping your spirits high and not succumbing to despair. Food, water, and shelter are important, but more important is keeping yourself mentally fit, if you ask me.
That said, I’d like to see a bit of an expansion to the current mood setup. My initial thoughts were something to the effect of four meters that are managed by positive and negative effects.
My suggested four would be:
[ul][li]Comfort[/li]
[li]Occupation[/li]
[li]Sanity[/li]
[li]Anxiety[/li][/ul]
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Comfort specifically relates to the character’s level of satisfaction with their environment. Long spans of being hungry, thirsty, cold, hot, or overburdened would contribute to comfort negatively, while reading a good book in a chair, sitting by a fire, sleeping in a comfortable bed, and enjoying a hot meal would contribute positively. When comfort falls, it directly detriments dexterity and perception, as the player is sore and thus less limber, as well as unable to focus on their surroundings for the sake of their physical discomfort, or daydreaming about better times.
Players can become accustomed to their environment over time. The longer their character is above or below a certain threshold, they will become “addicted” to certain creature comforts. Let’s say a character has become accustomed to a full belly, a warm bed, and a well-lit environment, they will lose the benefits of high levels of comfort slowly, and thus have to seek greater comforts over time in order to achieve the benefits. Meanwhile, dropping below those accustomed levels of comfort will result in more severe penalties for being uncomfortable. The opposite is also true, where if a player is uncomfortable for a significant period of time, they will eventually become quite accustomed to their harsh environment, and the penalties will be not as severe (until it falls beneath the truly catastrophic thresholds.)
Players who are uncomfortable lose focus easily, and take longer to craft, while players who are comfortable take less time to craft and gain focus more steadily.
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Occupation is the mental stat that keeps track of the player’s level of boredom and loneliness. Much like Comfort, the player can become accustomed to this over time. Boredom will make the player suffer lesser benefits to comfort, as well as eventually begin to affect their sanity. Players with high levels of boredom may eventually gain access to crafting recipes that allow them to create an imaginary friend that they can activate and talk to. This decreases sanity, but gives the player a boost to comfort and boredom. Players will also become “addicted” to their imaginary friend, and if they don’t have it somewhat nearby as their addiction increases, they will feel increasingly anxious and uncomfortable.
Occupation can be increased by performing tasks and reading entertainment books. Over time, other avenues for entertaining yourself might take shape. There’s always narcotics and booze, but there’s also the possibility of a somewhat insane character being entertained by killing zombies (at the cost of further sanity).
Some characters might have an affinity for certain skills, for instance, a character might genuinely love tinkering with vehicles while others might be bored to tears by it. Sewing might make one character itch to go outside and do something else, while another will be pleased as punch to do nothing more than embroider doilies.
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Sanity
Sanity is where the fun starts with mental stats. Sanity is affected by the amount of trauma your character receives. Killing a huge number of zombie children might severely impact the character’s sanity, and loneliness and boredom could severely impact this stat as well. As a player goes insane, there is a chance for cravings for human flesh, an uncontrollable urge to kill the undead, or in the worst cases, your character can slip into delusions.
Sanity isn’t as simple as “300 points makes you hallucinate”. The mind is a plastic thing, and as such, the mind has to adjust to long term environment changes to forget its prior grasp on reality. Short term dips below certain thresholds of insanity would result in nausea, depression, skin rashes, stomach pains, or extreme cravings for food (or even a reduced appetite). However, the player has to get themselves right, and fast, because every hour you are below the sanity threshold makes you more likely to stay beneath that threshold. Once your sanity level has settled beneath a threshold for a certain period of time, your character runs the risk of acquiring a semi-permanent affliction, such as hallucination, twitch, chronic depression, sleep disorders, eating disorders, hairloss (permanent -10 warmth to head), compromized immune system (2 times as likely to catch ambient diseases), night terrors (chance of waking up at night with anxiety-affecting dreams), etc.
Discussions for fixing longterm sanity afflictions are definitely in order on this note. I haven’t fully fleshed the idea out. However, my thoughts are that the permanent disorders might only be fixed by reading self-help books and can be suppressed by certain drugs. Each time you read through a self help book, for instance, you have a very small chance of escaping the affliction, though you also have to boost your sanity level through a change of environment, relaxation, and keeping yourself busy. Other factors, such as being extremely comfortable, happy, healthy, and occupied for a long period of time could potentially cure the psychosis as well.
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Anxiety is the last mood affecting stat that I’d like to describe. Anxiety balances with sanity and Comfort. Players that are comfortable are less likely to be afraid of their surroundings, while players that are insane are more likely to imagine horrifying things just around the corner. (There might be some afflictions that feed off of sanity in the reverse, where your character is made uneasy by periods free of danger, or whose fears are sated by prolonged periods of violence.)
Each time a player hears a noise in the night, walks into a dark basement without a flashlight, is awoken by bad dreams, or is caught out in acid drizzle, the player will begin to fear, and anxiety is increase. Anxious players are jumpy, jittery, and more likely to make loud noises while out walking around, dropping items, and crafting. They are also slightly more likely to fail while crafting, and will be less likely to dodge attacks or even trip and fall while being attacked due to either freezing up, or overbalancing.
Dealing with anxiety can be as simple as taking a Xanax, relaxing in comfort, or being in a familiar setting (being around their own scent-polluted tiles, for instance). Players can also get used to a certain amount of anxiety, and can learn coping mechanisms to deal with them. Talking to yourself can help ease anxiety for a very short period of time, albeit making a bit of noise, and doing things that you are familiar with (using skills that you have practiced quite a lot) can also help ease anxiety. If occupation is too high (as in, the player is doing too much too fast), players can actually suffer from anxiety due to being overstressed.
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Sorry this was long, but the entire mood thing has really made me somewhat unhappy with my survival simulation. I’m a skilled programmer, and would be happy to contribute if I had time to do so, but I have a number of contract jobs right now going that make that an impossibility.
Any input on these ideas?