Yeah, again, I think some kind of baseline hunger you can’t puke past would do it. Unless there is one and it’s just so close to starving anyway that the actual death was still from hunger increasing over time. I may be complaining about an issue less common for others since one of my character templates has weak stomach and tends to mutate toward vomitous. Shite luck all around.
But back to drugs, yeah! Because as fun as the recreational ones are, a diabetic trait and insulin shots would be hardcore as hell to survive with.
Cyanide. It kills you. Once a proper container system is implemented you could have some fun with unmarked pill bottles and things.[/quote]
Y’know, my single biggest complaint with NetHack was object-ID (which plays a significant role in object-fiddliness). I despise having to follow a complex sequence of steps to work out what an item is, and don’t see how remembering a complex procedure–involving price/reaction tables–is any less metagame-y than knowing that the Cone of Cold spellbook is Red or the Mutagen is Black.
So my reaction to this lies in the latitude of “no”.
It goes back to Rogue, and I’ve always found it to make the game a lot more interesting when you don’t have intrinsic knowledge of things if their function isn’t obvious. The closest thing in Cataclysm at the moment is mushrooms, which are trivially identified by their nutrition/enjoyment values.
Unfortunately I have no respect for Rogue. Cool Stuff that I’ll likely never be able to safely use (because I’ve only got the one use of it, and it’ll take at least one destructive test to safely identify its effects)…ain’t cool, and ain’t adding value to the game.
So, you and I apparently look for significantly different things in our games.
Since I don’t memorize the mushrooms’ stats, they aren’t trivial for me to identify–I’d need to call up the wiki page. That falls under the “table” metagame problem, IMO.
If you don’t appreciate the tension of being backed into a corner in a game with little left to save your life but an item whose function you aren’t entirely sure of, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Obviously, a distinct compromise should be that anything unmarked should be known by someone with someone with sufficient first aid skill, yeah? Most things would be labeled anyway I think. It’s nevertheless generally a good idea just to throw away something that is unmarked and unidentifiable anyway.
We could even implement a First Aid medication handbook which temporarily buffs first aid by a number of points, for reasons of identifying medicine only?
I’m my experience, the little brown ones are always ibuprofen and if it’s orange, it’s my ADD meds. If it’s got cute stars and happyfaces stamped into it, it’s probably illegal. Pill colouration is intended to be distinct entirely for the purpose of identification.
Now, obviously not everyone knows what pills look like (that would make sense using the first aid skill to know your shit, I like that suggestion), but it certainly wouldn’t be a case of changing potion colours like we get in nethack. Pills are constant.
My personal thoughts regarding a compromise would be to keep labelled meds as they are, and just have a new item labelled ‘unmarked pillbottle’ that can be any one thing. No ‘making containers work and re-assigning all drug items’. You get your Fun, but don’t remove anything we already have established. You’d use the stuff you trust first, but if desperation called for it, you could chance the iffy bottle.
This. Probably, you’re finding these ‘mysterious unlabelled pills’ on the bodies of druggies, so they’re probably some sort of illegal drug… but what kind? Who knows? If you’re desperate enough to take random unlabelled pills of the body of a dead druggie, you might not care.
You could also find some difficult to identify experimental medication within pharmacutical testing establishment. Prototype purifier pills perhaps?
Speaking of, the game needs mundane labs too. Not all labs are deep underground with deadly auto killify dissection lazers, black goo, human test subjects, machine gun robots, manhacks, or bionics, right? It’d be nice to see labs specializing in specific departments such as medicine, ecological preservation, testing of machines such as thoused for mining and law enforcement, bionics, and et cetera. Such that most labs wouldnt be identical environments, while still offering insight in the leading technology of this time period.
Not all labs are deep underground with deadly auto killify dissection lazers, black goo, human test subjects, machine gun robots, manhacks, or bionics, right?
Only if you don’t work for Aperture, they aren’t.
But really that is a nice idea - I’ve seen a lot of labs that involve scores of computers and an air conditioner more than anything else. Maybe point your idea out again in that thread about building suggestions.
Not all labs are deep underground with deadly auto killify dissection lazers, black goo, human test subjects, machine gun robots, manhacks, or bionics, right?
Only if you don’t work for Aperture, they aren’t.
But really that is a nice idea - I’ve seen a lot of labs that involve scores of computers and an air conditioner more than anything else. Maybe point your idea out again in that thread about building suggestions.[/quote]Alright, I’ll bump my quote over thataway then~
Good to see this thread going strong.
Well, I’ve got a few more suggestions.
As I’ve noticed, everyone’s got a basement pot farm in this game. How come there are no meth labs?
Also, why is it that poppy pain killers give no morale bonus? They are essentially opium, yes? Well, opium held China under it’s thrall for quite some time because of it’s mental effects.
Also, why is it that you cannot inject meth or cocaine, or snort or smoke heroin? Sometimes, it’s hard to find a crack pipe, or a syringe. Eh, just a few suggestions. It’d be cool to have some expansion to the drugs in the game, though. Dark put three types of potato chips in the game, but we can’t get a difference between bathtub crank cooked from caffeine pills and dayquil than some pure breaking bad meth cooked up with royal jelly? Just seems weird. Wish there was three versions of quality to the street drugs like there are to the potato chips.
To be honest, the whole unidentified item thing wouldn’t make sense for most items in a modern setting, where substances would usually be labelled. I just really like things that trick players into killing themselves.
Unlabelled bottles would be more likely if the drugs were illegal substances. Or if you’re me and you use one empty ADD meds bottle to store emergency tylenol, ibuprofen, allergy meds, pepto, and actual ADD meds. Plausible still, just, like you say, really not that common.