The current mutation system: is grindy, is only really accessible in the “endgame” (except for genetic chaos mutants), breaks the balance of traits vs stats (not THAT important in multi-pool, but still), and ignores the whole set of point values already written for mutations.
My idea of a fix is:
Mutation choice being affected by how good you are already.
Rough idea of algorithm:
First, we want to find the “intended mutation score”:
[ul][li]Sum point values of traits and mutations player has[/li]
[li]Add stats to that[/li]
[li]Add mutagen quality to that[/li]
[li]Subtract some value representing average character (sum of stats + sum of traits you can get in a typical start)[/li][/ul]
Then:
[ul][li]Generate some mutation sets by copying the current mutation list and adding and removing random (available) mutations to it[/li]
[li]Rate the mutation sets in similar way to the rating for player[/li]
[li]Randomly pick one set, preferring those rated closest to “preferred mutation score”[/li]
[li]Mutate towards this set[/li][/ul]
[hr]
As a result:
[ul][li]Mutagen quality becomes an easy to understand setting, allowing adding cheap mutagens (that mostly suck) and rare designer mutant ones that grinders grind towards[/li]
[li]Can add targeted mutagens without upsetting the balance, by simply having them require a mutation set with specific mutation in it[/li]
[li]Mutants become as balanced as mutation point scores allow. This of course would mean buffing (or giving huge negative scores to) shit mutations before it goes fully live.[/li]
[li]Getting a bad mutation stops being an “ah shit, purify time” moment, since the point score means it is just a high-risk-high-reward thing (rather than high-chance-to-drink-purifier one)[/li]
[li]Starts become more balanced against each other. Could need some defense mechanism against pure skill starts, which would become pretty great under this mechanic[/li][/ul]
Point score isn’t the most realistic thing out there, but neither are perfect creatures immune to disease, damage, pain, poison and so on.
IRL everything is about tradeoffs: if you’re strong you need to eat more (bears sleep through winter, elephants eat all day), if you move fast you either eat a lot or are very light, if you resist poison your metabolism is impaired in some way to allow going around that poison. The requirement system for mutations (need herbivore for grazer etc.) is too specific to catch such tradeoffs, so a gamey point system will most likely do a better job at also being realistic.
My main concern with this approach is it doesn’t afaict address the main issue with the mutation system. For a particular build there is an optimal set of mutations, and powergamers are going to do whatever is necessary to reach that set of mutations. I feel like this needs to be addressed, but…
Frankly what I want is a design for the mutation system, what is it for, how is the player expected to interact with it, how is the player expected to learn about it, what are it’s limits, etc. Right now we can’t evaluate if a change is good because we don’t have an explicit goal in mind, just a vague concept of, “give the player cool stuff at random, but try to not break the game”.
For example, is repeated purifier use an expected part of the system or an exploit? More generally is targeting a specific mutation set and using mutagen and purifier to reach that set something we want the player to do, or is it metagaming nonsense that should be discouraged?
By assigning and respecting point values, mutation sets become more about compromise between what is achievable and what is good.
Sure, optimal sets still exist, but optimal routes are much less pronounced. No longer would all “beast” trees instantly lose to “human” ones.
My idea is that mutations should be partly a playstyle.
Baseline human would be mostly a crafter, heavily armored, using CBMs to boost self, but not too good at melee and dodging.
Mutations on the other hand would focus on self-reliance (no penalties for raw food), natural armor (with great armor/encumbrance ratio), mobility, with higher average stats, but with lower armor and not stacking with CBMs (more: CBMs could count as mutations for purpose of points, to discourage too much cherry picking).
As for interactions - player would mutate like now, but with two different types of mutagen: low quality mutagen weighted negative and bundled with generally useful items (upgraded medpacks that unbreak limbs) and high quality mutagen which the player would almost always want to use, but could never craft. Involuntary mutations could be more common.
It could be useful to allow player to learn own “biological quality” by using a medical laptop, hospital console or one-use blood analyzer. This would reveal current mutation level wrapped in some sci-fi handwave units related to blob presence (high blob = can “power” more stuff, low blob = will try to feed off body causing bad muts).
Mutagen/purifier bulimia thing is bad.
I’d allow targeted mutation to fix it, though only at the point player can craft purifier.
[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:3, topic:13430”]By assigning and respecting point values, mutation sets become more about compromise between what is achievable and what is good.
Sure, optimal sets still exist, but optimal routes are much less pronounced. No longer would all “beast” trees instantly lose to “human” ones.
My idea is that mutations should be partly a playstyle.
Baseline human would be mostly a crafter, heavily armored, using CBMs to boost self, but not too good at melee and dodging.
Mutations on the other hand would focus on self-reliance (no penalties for raw food), natural armor (with great armor/encumbrance ratio), mobility, with higher average stats, but with lower armor and not stacking with CBMs (more: CBMs could count as mutations for purpose of points, to discourage too much cherry picking).
As for interactions - player would mutate like now, but with two different types of mutagen: low quality mutagen weighted negative and bundled with generally useful items (upgraded medpacks that unbreak limbs) and high quality mutagen which the player would almost always want to use, but could never craft. Involuntary mutations could be more common.
It could be useful to allow player to learn own “biological quality” by using a medical laptop, hospital console or one-use blood analyzer. This would reveal current mutation level wrapped in some sci-fi handwave units related to blob presence (high blob = can “power” more stuff, low blob = will try to feed off body causing bad muts).
Mutagen/purifier bulimia thing is bad.
I’d allow targeted mutation to fix it, though only at the point player can craft purifier.[/quote]
A couple of thoughts on this:
At the moment, I think that the ‘human’ lines win because of flexibility, and particularly the gear-compatibility that is needed to access certain areas. With any non-standard bodyparts you can’t wear anti-rad gear, and it’s going to be hard to venture into ice labs because you can’t keep your mandibles/tentacles/wings/etc. warm. I think that part of making non-human paths viable is making sure that the values reflect the loss of utility, or providing more options for a mutated player to make up that utility somehow (sure, you’ll never find a chimera-fit balaclava - but why can’t I make one to fit me?). There is a similar thing here in terms of (at the moment) not being able to wear armor on your torso and/or head means that at some point you will get instagibbed by something, and none of the mutations that prevent you from wearing that armor are worth it.
Making CBMs count for points for mutations seems like it will just encourage people to do all of their mutating and then install all of their CBMs. If there is an attempt to avoid cyborg mutants, I’d rather see something more like the marloss/mutation interaction: Being more mutated makes CBM installation more difficult (because your biology is distinctly non-standard), mutations may reject or conflict with CBMs (any of the eye mutation traits will conflict with any of the eye CBMs, for example, potentially removing the mutation or CBM when the other is gained), and having CBMs makes mutating more difficult / less likely (maybe through points, maybe just with lowered chance to acquire a mutation through any means)
Monitoring mutation quality might be a good use for the MedSoft software
I really dislike involuntary mutations, especially with the possibility of gear destruction. At the very least, there should be clear signposting to give players a chance to prepare for an upcoming (but potentially unknown) mutation.
I know that the current item system doesn’t support it, but it might be nice to have more granular mutagen, both in terms of quality and targeting, probably based on cooking and potentially based on a series of purification steps (requiring time + purifier or something). Labs might be the only source of 1.0-quality mutagen (mostly positive, possibly targeted to a set of traits like the existing serums), and mutated legs might be 0.1-quality untargeted mutagen (random selection, low chance of effect), but a player with time and resources and skill might be able to craft 0.9-quality mutagen and, with a bunch of purifier and MedSoft or something, create a mutagen targeted to a specific trait (which would probably be 'very high chance of this trait, small chance of other traits either instead of or in addition to the desired one). That’s already ‘sort of’ in with the tier-2 targeted mutagens like Alpha and Elf-a that seem like they are trying to combine multiple mutagens to pick the best from each, so letting a sufficiently late-game player do it themselves doesn’t seem that bad.
I’m extremely sceptical that a simple score rating is going to have enough nuance to make there be any interesting tradeoffs. It sounds like optimal play in this system would boil down to min maxing, take all the random ‘bad’ mutations you can and use that to ‘buy’ the good mutations you want, that’s not interesting. Also you’re proposing double counting stats and traits, but only for people who mutate.
Can you explain this more? If beast mutation lines are bad now, I don’t see anything about your proposal that would fix them.
[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:3, topic:13430”]My idea is that mutations should be partly a playstyle.
Baseline human would be mostly a crafter, heavily armored, using CBMs to boost self, but not too good at melee and dodging.
Mutations on the other hand would focus on self-reliance (no penalties for raw food), natural armor (with great armor/encumbrance ratio), mobility, with higher average stats, but with lower armor and not stacking with CBMs (more: CBMs could count as mutations for purpose of points, to discourage too much cherry picking).[/quote] allowing mutations to fundamentally alter playstyle is one detail, but what about people that only mutate a little? Is this applied in depth, with every mutation adding new play options and removing others? Or is it just when fully mutated that this applies?
“Like now” kills this, forget how it works now, it’s a mess of nonsense. What I would like to see is the design of mutations from the ground up, until we have that, anything you add is just one more layer on the pile.
[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:3, topic:13430”]Mutagen/purifier bulimia thing is bad.
I’d allow targeted mutation to fix it, though only at the point player can craft purifier.[/quote]
I don’t follow, fix what? My point is, if it’s really bad, we have options for eliminating it entirely, like having aspects of how a player will mutate fixed at creation, requiring the player to deal with the hand they are dealt instead of converging on a standard build.
Trading too much could be helped by limiting distance from baseline.
Tradeoffs would not be very interesting because we don’t have many interesting negative mutations yet (food-related problems are almost uniformly boring), but it would, for example, buff those who have slot-wrecking beast parts.
Can you explain this more? If beast mutation lines are bad now, I don't see anything about your proposal that would fix them.
By assigning noticeably negative points to bestial mutations such as fur (hard to stay cold in summer), slot-wreckers and encumbrance where we really don’t want it, those lines would gain a lot of points to counterbalance the bad mutations.
Compare to what we have now: random mutations are more likely to pick bad mutations in bad lines, simply because the distribution is uniform and filled mostly with bad mutations.
allowing mutations to fundamentally alter playstyle is one detail, but what about people that only mutate a little? Is this applied in depth, with every mutation adding new play options and removing others? Or is it just when fully mutated that this applies?
People who only mutate a little would be fine, except if they got bestial part (slot wrecker) in the process - then they’d want to purify or mutate fully. That could be helped by allowing “soft thresholds” - only giving out beast mutations to those who are sufficiently mutated.
Not full playstyles per mutation, just modification to what we have now.
For example, we’d want bird line to focus on sniping, hit+run, but avoiding getting surrounded. Bear on the other hand should be powerful enough to get surrounded, rip everything apart (with mutated claws or a battle axe), then heal it off quickly, but also be bad at running away.
In this system, cherry-picking single mutations should be allowed only for low grade ones, with the more serious level requiring commitment (not necessarily breaking threshold - I really don’t like current thresholds). For example, if one was to get too birdy, a beak or weak bones would almost certainly pop up, but if one tried to cherrypick non-bird bad mutations, it should be likely that instead the good bird mutations are taken away - this could be an actual mechanic.
"Like now" kills this, forget how it works now, it's a mess of nonsense. What I would like to see is the design of mutations from the ground up, until we have that, anything you add is just one more layer on the pile.
I’ll start by listing what I liked/disliked in other games, so that my motivation becomes more clear:
Caves of Qud has a voluntary mutation system where the player picks mutations from full list (at start) and from lists of 3 possibilities (later on). Except for a small set of mutations classified as bad, all others are considered good. No mutations ever go away. The problem with this system is that this randomness in selection creates permanently unviable characters. On the other hand, cherry-picked characters are fun (if broken).
On a less related note, Qud is also notable for having both mutations and bionics, though no character can have both (one “race” has mutations, other gets bionics).
Dungeon Crawl has demonspawn, which have fixed (at birth) mutation lines, which can never be cleansed but can be added to by regular mutation system. They are notorious for turning unviable in the middle of play due to acquiring a set of mutations that clashes with selected playstyle.
Also draconians, which have significantly differing win rates depending on color they gain at the end of early game (color grants some stat changes and usually one special attack).
In DDA, the most fun characters I played were invariably Genetic Chaos mutants. On the other hand, most of my characters who start crafting mutagen are instantly and permanently shelved due to being incredibly boring.
So I’d like the system to possess the following qualities:
[ul][li]No forced, per-character mutations without player control[/li]
[li]Cherry-picking allowed, at least until we can figure out how to get rid of it cleanly, but should always come with negatives (those could be cherry-picked too)[/li]
[li]“Cherry-grinding” on the other hand should be unviable - no sustainable method of mutation should ever be better than cherry-picking above[/li]
[li]Not sure about forced mutations. I like them, others don’t. Maybe forced mutations only until cherry-picking starts?[/li]
[li]CBMs should softly conflict with mutations. They should decrease quality of mutations and mutations should decrease slots or even functionality of CBMs. Where both fill the same role, the results should not stash (say, hydraulic muscles should not stack with strong mutation).[/li]
[li]Purity should be softly discouraged, by making mutants better than baseline (but not base+CBMs) and bundling uncontrolled mutations with useful items[/li][/ul]
To achieve this:
[ul][li]Mutagen drops should be relatively common, but varying in quality (not too much). A bad mutagen could still cleanse bad mutations for very badly mutated character. Early mutation junkies could reroll their mutations, but never cherrypick them due to limited supply of quality mutagen (and purifier)[/li]
[li]Branch mutations would become easy to craft. Mix mutagen with eggs in a pot - acquire bird mutagen. This could skip the crafting system and become just a property of mutagen - mutagen use asking you which branch you want, having character mix components and consume/inject the mix.[/li]
[li]Purifier would still exist, but would be treated as a bad mutagen (preferentially clean good mutations), to discourage usage for cherrypicking[/li]
[li]Mutagen/purifier binges would be obsoleted by cherrypick mutagens. Though that’s just the post-game grind thing.[/li]
[li]Thresholds aren’t a thing you cross once, but instead are based on current set of mutations. That is, if you’re birdy enough (and not beary enough to counter that), you have the bird threshold. When coming down from a threshold, all post-thresh mutations have to be removed BEFORE (or during the mutation “surge”) the threshold is un-crossed. That is, if a bear with hibernation drinks bird mutagen, the only mutation sets that are considered are those that stay post-bear-threshold and those that remove hibernation (and those that do both).[/li][/ul]
My point is, if it's really bad, we have options for eliminating it entirely, like having aspects of how a player will mutate fixed at creation, requiring the player to deal with the hand they are dealt instead of converging on a standard build.
It is bad, but post-game grinders use it as a goal to keep going. Until we have meaningful endgame, it’s better to go with a bandaid fix that improves quality of life than to cut it out entirely and give nothing back.
As for standard build: I don’t see a good way to fix it at post-game without it getting too… anti-player. So I’d rather fix it only for the midgame and then treat it as a necessary evil.
We don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Honestly you can do whatever you want with the mutation system because I don’t care what it looks like as long as it doesn’t wreck the rest of the game. At this point I’d like to evict it to a mod and see if I can just minimize it’s impact on the rest of the game.
This is, as you point out, a list of qualities, not a design.
Consider the following questions:
What unique decisions does this system bring to the game?
Is this system mandatory for all players to interact with?
Is this system mandatory for certain playstyle?
What are the limits of what this system is allowed to do?
Why would a player want to interact with this system?
Why would a player want to avoid this system?
How would a new player discover this system?
How would a new player learn more about this system?
These are the kind of questions that need to be answered, and ideally not by reflexively answering them in such a way that the ultimate answer is the list of features you have in mind already. Also ideally, these questions would surface more questions that need to be answered, none of the above are specific enough that a simple sentence is a reasonable and complete answer.
Not sure what do you mean. What would be the kind of answer you want here?
Consider the following questions:
1. What unique decisions does this system bring to the game?
2. Is this system mandatory for all players to interact with?
3. Is this system mandatory for certain playstyle?
4. What are the limits of what this system is allowed to do?
5. Why would a player want to interact with this system?
6. Why would a player want to avoid this system?
7. How would a new player discover this system?
8. How would a new player learn more about this system?
The ability to trade armor slots, regeneration/degeneration, stats, natural armor, extra attacks etc. in some preset ways, at some risk of getting unwanted result. Essentially post-chargen customization.
No, it would be possible to avoid interacting with it, although it would be suboptimal.
Unarmed combat would not reach parity with armed combat without mutations. So “soft-mandatory” for unarmed combatants. Eventually it would be “soft-mandatory” for anyone not choosing bionics.
What kind of limits? The system is supposed to hand out traits. The traits would do mostly what they do now - modify stats, grant armor, grant attacks, modify consumption. The traits would be picked from a limited set, dependent on player character and used item.
To specialize the character post-chargen. To have a significantly different build from “the usual”.
To retain the ability to wear power armor and hazmat unpenalized. To install bionics with no penalties.
By reading item descriptions, notes in lab and listening to NPC chatter. But most likely by reading on forum/wiki.
By experimenting, reading more notes in lab, using a hospital console or specialized items. But most likely by reading forum/wiki.
The kinds of answers you gave. I was just being too vague previously and maybe went overboard trying to be specific.
Consider the following questions:
1. What unique decisions does this system bring to the game?
2. Is this system mandatory for all players to interact with?
3. Is this system mandatory for certain playstyle?
4. What are the limits of what this system is allowed to do?
5. Why would a player want to interact with this system?
6. Why would a player want to avoid this system?
7. How would a new player discover this system?
8. How would a new player learn more about this system?
Can't be bothered to do formatting on my phone, so conversation inline.
The ability to trade armor slots, regeneration/degeneration, stats, natural armor, extra attacks etc. in some preset ways, at some risk of getting unwanted result. Essentially post-chargen customization.
Perfect, no comment.
No, it would be possible to avoid interacting with it, although it would be suboptimal.
calling it suboptimal concerns me, I feel like endgame geared up vs endgame mutated should be comparable.
Unarmed combat would not reach parity with armed combat without mutations. So “soft-mandatory” for unarmed combatants. Eventually it would be “soft-mandatory” for anyone not choosing bionics.
again, mutations being mandatory isn’t what I was expecting. Soft mandatory for unarmed combat seems fine, humans are terrible at unarmed combat. Endgame mutant vs endgame marksman should be comparable in some ways.
What kind of limits? The system is supposed to hand out traits. The traits would do mostly what they do now - modify stats, grant armor, grant attacks, modify consumption. The traits would be picked from a limited set, dependent on player character and used item.
examples of limits could either be distinct rules like “no mindreading” or “no flying” or a vague concept like, “can only grant abilities some natural animal has”.
To specialize the character post-chargen. To have a significantly different build from “the usual”.
To retain the ability to wear power armor and hazmat unpenalized. To install bionics with no penalties.
both solid, though I think they could have more breadth.
By reading item descriptions, notes in lab and listening to NPC chatter. But most likely by reading on forum/wiki.
This is the reality, but it’s kind of terrible, I’d like to at least aspire to some way for a non-spoilered player to interact with them.
By experimenting, reading more notes in lab, using a hospital console or specialized items. But most likely by reading forum/wiki.
again, ick. Not your fault of course.
Actually I’m a bit tapped out right now so I’m not going to start another round of discussion, I hope you found this productive, I think it was.
I’m currently mostly in the brainstorming mode, criticism is useful. I don’t want to implement this until 0.D, so time isn’t really a concern here.
calling it suboptimal concerns me, I feel like endgame geared up vs endgame mutated should be comparable.
Geared would have CBMs, though. CBMs would have some advantages, mutations different ones.
again, mutations being mandatory isn't what I was expecting.
The assumption is that anyone not mutating is using bionics, because bionics have no downsides.
Endgame mutant vs endgame marksman should be comparable in some ways.
Non-bird, non-cephalophod, non-cat mutant would not be any better at ranged attacks than baseline human. A human would have the advantage of bionics and complete coverage in kevlar. But a bird mutant would be a better sniper than non-mutants, for example.
examples of limits could either be distinct rules like "no mindreading" or "no flying" or a vague concept like, "can only grant abilities some natural animal has".
Didn’t think those through yet. But I’d prefer the theme to be “it killed all researchers and escaped from the lab! [incomprehensible gurgling vocals kick in]” than “the catgirl maid tilts her head and says ‘nyaa!’ revealing fangs”.
So inhuman regeneration, tentacles in wrong places, bone plates, acid blood and so on would all be cool. I’m thinking the limits should be like what zombies have, to show that it’s the same deal.
Though if you’re sure about removing mutations from the core and moving them to mod, then I’d go full soft sci-fi and add telekinesis, mind control, lightning gun from hand and so on.
This is the reality, but it's kind of terrible, I'd like to at least aspire to some way for a non-spoilered player to interact with them.
Item descriptions and NPC chatter could be relatively common.
Maybe also books with mutagens having chapters on lore (and not just crafting/skilling), describing experiments on mutants in sciency style.
Mutations based on comparing current tendencies of mutations vs default human state, sounds quite alright but what if you pick/choose traits/mutations that are just good but don’t want to mutate in that direction at all? Would you have to abandon mutating altogether then?
[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:2, topic:13430”]My main concern with this approach is it doesn’t afaict address the main issue with the mutation system. For a particular build there is an optimal set of mutations, and powergamers are going to do whatever is necessary to reach that set of mutations. I feel like this needs to be addressed, but…
Frankly what I want is a design for the mutation system, what is it for, how is the player expected to interact with it, how is the player expected to learn about it, what are it’s limits, etc. Right now we can’t evaluate if a change is good because we don’t have an explicit goal in mind, just a vague concept of, “give the player cool stuff at random, but try to not break the game”.
For example, is repeated purifier use an expected part of the system or an exploit? More generally is targeting a specific mutation set and using mutagen and purifier to reach that set something we want the player to do, or is it metagaming nonsense that should be discouraged?[/quote]
Mutations should work hand in hand with CBMs or be even the next step after getting the risk-free upgrades (because now you could afford to start doing mtrade-offs). certain CBMs counteract the negatives of some trade-off mutations even now. Hell, maybe there could be some CBMs that actually help you mutate in a certain way (spider dna implant or whatnot) and/or something like a CVD machine/stem cell treatment console that deals with mutations more reliably. I think that mutations should become a part of the equation in this power trip fantasy. Trying to be “realistic” is nonsense, you’ve already thrown that out the window by spawning your first zombie.
You could mutate only halfway there and halfway in some other direction. You wouldn’t unlock the best abilities of either tree, but would have good abilities of both.
Mutations should work hand in hand with CBMs or be even the next step after getting the risk-free upgrades (because now you could afford to start doing mtrade-offs).
No. The result is that everyone looks the same in the end.
The synergy should only come naturally, from combined abilities working well together - strength mutations boosting bionic claw damage, bird eyes helping to aim laser finger, but not bird eyes working together with bionic aiming system or martial art bionic understanding how to use tentacles.
This isn’t about realism, it’s about having playstyleS, with that ‘s’ at the end. So that you can play a warrior, a wizard or a rogue (or a bard or monk or…), not warriorwizardrogue master of all trades.
This is probably an old, silly, unwanted suggestion - but why don’t you just remove entirely the ability to choose what sort of mutation you are mutating towards? Instead of having 15 billion serum types, have ONE mutation recipe which is (secretly) influenced by a range of factors in effect (by things like how you eat, what vitamen levels are high and low, perhaps environmental factors on the local visible map) - and then have it take effect over time, like a month or so. I mean, this would be a radical rework, but what you are already proposing is a radical re-work.
Mutations in any other game or genre are crazy things that sometimes happen to you, and you always hate because you can’t choose it. Here, its something crazy insane people do to themselves. Or have done to them, in the lab start. I think if it was something where…you have a marksman, and suddenly you loose your arms and mutate into a giant gilla lizard, thats more balanced then…you have a marksman, and he tries to mutate into a bird. The CHOICE is whats unbalanced, thats all.
So what you do is have a few ways for mutations to trigger, such as:
Drinking a mutagen.
Encountering rare special things (like the Rat King, or a radioactive crater, or eating that wierd fungus fruit)
Probably long-term exposure to fungus, like eating or being exposed to blob. This would require an invisible blob-taint radiation statistic or something.
So sometimes, SOME players mutate, and the game decides what they mutate into, and its slow. This gives it a more ‘roguelike’ quality, and lets you keep the entire current mutation line without adding in ‘points’ and balances things by it being uncontrollable. And if you mutate, over the course of a month your CBM’s fail on you, or whatever, and turn into annoying buzzy things. Sucks, but you should have avoided spending two weeks clearing out that blob pit, or eating mutant animal meat, or whatever.
All Purifier would do is act like antibiotics do for being infected by zombies - stopping the progression, with repeated usage reversing it. No metagaming would be possible. 90-percent of your problems go away, and the rest are solved by a world option “Mutation: On/Off”. So people who hate mutation could ignore it. But if it was an extra challenge, an element of the world, something organic, the people who dislike it might not hate it so much.
And then the game would feel more alive in general. Right now mutation (while great) - feels ad-hoc and tacked on. Under this system, it would become a more natural element of the world, give you way more options with monsters/npcs appearing down the line to challenge experienced survivors, and would add in extra surprises. It wouldn’t arbitrarily ruin a game - I think the above offers clear examples, analogous to avoiding radiation exposure, of what to avoid and do and how to treat it - so people with super-cars won’t suddenly turn into bears and not fit into them unless they are lazy/really unlucky. And if they left the worldgen option on, then they knew they could get unlucky or suffer for being lazy.
And lets be honest, a mutation system which changes you into an insect because for some stupid reason you ate tons of mutant honey from a hive is much more awesome then one which turns you into an insect because you ground out some scifi potions for four RL hours. A system which turns you into a medical mutant because you got covered in blob slime with tons of near-fatal wounds is more awesome then one which turns you into one because you ground out medical-serum for RL hours. A system which turns you into a bovine because you only ate salads for a week is more awesome… you get the idea. I mean, I don’t think that would be too hard to code (I could be wrong, but I’d think a simple equation or two would do it) … and would be immensely intuitive to new players. No spoilers needed.
Then the lab notes become ‘fed subject mutagen after only meat-diet, subject began assuming cainine attributes. Fed purifier. Will repeat experiment with salad’. or somesuch.
“Eat food with mutagen - mutate into specific kind of mutant” is functionally nearly identical to “craft mutagen with specific kind of food in it”.
The problem with “adaptive” mutations is that it’s very easy to run into a situation where grinding is rewarded.
For example, if mutating into medical was affected mostly by recently regenerated hit points, trying to build a medical mutant would involve very tedious self-harm routines before sleep.
It could make some sense if it was limited to avoidance (don’t eat meat for a while -> bovine mutation chance starts ramping up) rather than mostly affected by things actually done.
The problem with rewarding specific behavior rather than avoidance is that it is unbounded. If you want to mutate cat and eating meat is cat-like, the optimal solution is going to swamp, stocking up on meat, turning on metabolic interchange and eating literal tons of meat in one sitting.
And bounded positive reward system would quickly turn into “did I remember to self-harm today?”, daily honey sandwich and other rituals.
So no, arbitrary mutations are definitely lesser evil compared to positive adaptive system. Negative adaptive system on the other hand would be very time-dependent (need to purge diet of meat for months to optimize bovine etc.) and so would hurt the early part of the game, which is the one where mutations are already unavailable.
Uncontrollable mutations would require really huge buffs to be worth it. And would not stop mutation scumming at all, as long as mutagen was craftable.
No, I didn’t mean…eat food with mutagen. I meant… let me phrase it better. You have, perhaps identified a problem though. But one fixable.
Ever play Fallout 3/New Vegas/Fallout 4? Foods all have rad ratings. So basically, certain foods would have a ‘Fantasy Eldritch Horror Blob Rating’ - or whatever. Players would not be told, in game, what this is or what foods have it. Some might be obvious. Examples would be mutant honey, meat from mutants, etc. But you could also get it from being covered in slime, stuck in webbing, or exposure to environmental concerns. You have no idea what your level of this exposure is. At some point, if exposure is too high, based on your recent activities, a mutation path would trigger. (or I guess how that played out could be subject to balance, perhaps longterm would work better, and there would be an invisible talley, or whatever.)
A positive adaptive system, as you put it - where you seek out and become a mutant, makes zero sense from an in-character perspective, and is mechanically problematic. From a coders point of view, you may see it as the same. But this is like Warren Specter thinking that getting rid of skills for Deus Ex 2: Invisible War didn’t matter, because it was “functionally the same” - the same mistake they made with Fallout 4. Its different from the players point of view. Its about immersion. If you want, make mutagen not actually trigger a mutation. Perhaps mutagen just adds to the blob/rad rating, or whatever. You will still, in theory, get people trying to aim for specific mutations. But it will require a specific playstyle, not just grinding. It’ll /feel/ different. For your average player, or your average person, what will happen is - suddenly, they’ll mutate into something, and think ‘oh yeah, I’ve been doing x, that makes sense’.
If someone wants to spend an endless, ceaseless, amount of in-game and RL time ‘rigging’ things - you’ll never stop that. Period. All you can do is, yes, make some silly point system which takes up huge amounts of programming time and makes things annoying for people not trying to powergame it. Or, you can give them another option. To not worry about it, and let it happen dynamically. If it happens.
But a positive adaptation system just doesn’t make any sense. The way it works now, you basically leave the simulation the game represents, and become your player arbitrarily forcing the character to do something horriffic and stupid because you find it cool. There’s no other option, and until the lab scenerio was put in, no other alternative. Perhaps that what it could come to - but your admitting defeat from the start, so of course its going to end badly. You have to balance it from an immersion perspective. And that means taking it out of the players active hands as much as possible.
Regarding it being ‘worth it’ - thats PRECISELY THE POINT. They wouldn’t NEED to be worth it. You could have entirely sucky mutation paths, and let players get addicted to purifier trying to stave it off and preserve their humanity. The point becomes not ‘does this add to the power level’ but ‘does this enhance immersion/add to a simulated, dynamic world’. As it is, players will inevitably get bored eventually as they become the ultimate power ever. But by crafting a more immersive world, that aspect goes away. Mutations are just another hazard, something that could potentially happen to the unwary. And perhaps it’ll be good, and perhaps it’ll be bad. And if you try and jury-rig it too much… perhaps the game figures it out and turns you into a chaos mutant, or a puddle of ooze, and it sucks. But it should be an immersive experience, not something to just ‘add to the players power level’. Or ‘worth it’.
Loosing is Fun works for Dwarf Fortress. It can work for CATA: DDA. I’m not saying “punish players arbitrarily” (not entirely) - but mutations don’t have to be a benefit.
I need to rephrase myself:
When you talk about things like eating honey, being slimed/webbed increasing specific mutation rating, that is what I meant by “positive adaptation system”.
It is a very grindy system that trades all the possible chances at actually making the thing sensibly balanced for some flavor of “I guess that makes sense because I did something related”.
The end result is that you get a tedious system where powergaming is rewarded.
You greatly overestimate how much does short term immersion matter here. If mutations were forced on the player, this would be a core game mechanic player interacts with a lot. At this point, arbitrary mechanics are often far less immersion breaking than the actual results of well-intentioned pro-immersion changes.
The whole system of affecting mutation paths by doing specific things/being subjected to specific effects is so inherently broken it could be easily improved by simply making mutations totally uncontrollable by the player (except “mutate”/“avoid mutating”).
All you can do is, yes, make some silly point system which takes up huge amounts of programming time and makes things annoying for people not trying to powergame it.
That’s the problem: YOUR system is the one which would be very annoying for the players who don’t want to powergame. It would force them to powergame when they don’t want to, just to avoid the mutations of the weak type.
The point-balanced mutation system is the exact opposite of that: it hurts powergamers while giving the rest a chance.
And there is no way to properly balance it without spending a LOT of time on tweaking the formulas. Without that, it would gravitate very heavily into one of two extremes: either it doesn’t matter enough to be noticeable (so no immersion here) or it would be so strong that everyone would either spend a lot of time avoiding mutations or grinding mutation stats of specific kind.
Ironically, all the faults of the system - silliness, amount of programming time, annoyance - describe your system and not mine.