I don’t want to spam the forum so for now on Ill keep my ideas to one thread. Ill edit the first thread and put a date in for new ideas. Most people don’t like my ideas, but I figure Im not hurting anyone by posting them. Ill also consolidate my other suggestions tonight or tomorrow to this one. I really like this game and I suck at it. Most people who are fans are good, so Im giving ideas from a crap Rogue Like player (I suck at ADOM and Dwarf Fortress too).
I am not criticizing the coders. you guys are great. I work as a DBA and Im not sure how you guys can handle being techies at work all day then coming home and doing this…
Please dont hate on my ideas.
6/29/2013
.6 stuff
– rotten food can no longer be cooked and be unrotten. ok. can you have it rot away so it leaves the map? going to mushrooms/strawberries on the map just to see rotten, is kind of annoying. minor issue
– how about more ways to preserve food? We have some. Im not a survivalist. anyone know semi-realistic stuff? Smoker? Salting? Can you vacuum seal put in a chest and bury (so its cool?)
wont stay indefinitely but longer. in winter, you might be able to store stuff longer cause its cold.
– can we make fletching from platic bags without either eating the chips (unhealthy) or having to ‘w’ the chips, then ‘U’, just craft the fletching and then give us back the chips or destroy them as a penalty.
IN GAME IRC CLIENT (from Tome 4, www.te4.org)
– add an IRC client to the game and have a window auto popup that connects you the cataclysm IRC room. use a client that is user friendly.
– yes you can connect to the IRC room, but this auto-connects so more people
– try out tome 4. its a good roguelike. the built in chat makes the game alot better.
– this would help get people to stick around and may get us more kickstarter contributors.
Wiki:
– how about a post for volunteers to edit and contribute to the wiki? I can help with that? Do we have backups in case we get someone who tries to destroy it?
– the driving page: Had a little trouble with this. Can you copy the command where you start driving (’^’) to the section with commands. I found this difficult to find. I did a control f for ‘mount’ after I saw some commands reference dismount. Could help newbs.
– starter guides. take posts made by people on how to get starter and add to starting guides.
Option:
Make more of the newer features optional. When you start the game, add a link on the start page that lists 'new stuff that are optional’
If you make more stuff optional you can spend less time testing between releasing and use the fan base as crowd testers. Testing is very time consuming, so if you can release stuff that works ‘ok’, then we can find bugs, issues with them for you. If you make them ‘optional’ and leave them off by default, no one will get mad. Well some people will but some people get mad at anything
KickStarter:
Doesn’t look like your higher tiers for personal items are popular. It looks like the in game tiers are more popular. How about adding more tiers that have in game stuff and parallel tiers. So you can donate $20 twice and recommend more than one in game thing? This could help us get above $7k. I think $16k is rather ambitious for this size of a community. So by offering more in game stuff, we will get more donations, suggestions and I think with the current structure, these would be easier to implement (I could be wrong)
– design a positive and negative trait
– design a profession
– design mobs (even let them use their own name as a zombie ). Id pay for Zombie Tom Brady. Im a Jets fan.
– design a weapon
– design new skills ($60 for this I am guessing).
Stat Training(from ADOM/Nethack)
These rogue likes have a concept of ‘train/abuse’ stats. you can do stuff to raise them or do stuff to lower them. Not just getting mutations. you can excercise to get more strength, or do stuff to lower dex, etc… Should have some randomness.
Character Creation enhancements
– More stats (make this option since some people won’t liike it).
– quickness: for increasing speed (separate it out from dex)
– wisdom: this comes withe age. when skills get higher, you get a special bonus to them.
– Height/weight: big guys get more hp. Little/skinny guys can dodge better. fat people can be interesting. they get hungry quicker, but take alot longer to die of hunger (but get skinnier if they dont stay full… so zombie weight loss). Tall guys do better with bigger weapons (a great mud called batmud.org has height stuff in it, but its height by race)
– non human race: can play an alien (little green man-- frightens NPCs) or a mutant
– age: younger survivors get a bonus to strength/dex/speed, but suffer penalties to wisdom. older survivors suffer pentalties to strength/dex/speed, but get bonus to wisdom and random starting skills above 0 (can be associated with professions). you have experience…
Traits:
Negative:
–Flat feet (I have flat feet btw). you need to wear orthotics and you develop foot pain easier which slows you down and requires rest
–Diabetes: need insulin and cant have too much sugar or you die (can develop type 2 diabetes in game by eating poorly?)
– Heart Problems: you get chest pain. if you eat well and lose weight this seems to get better
– Hemroids: for our older survivors. hurts to run sometimes and you need a special cream. plus NPCs laugh at you.
– Migraines: some days its tough to go outside in the sun.
– Anger Management Issues: you can get angry at times and this makes you attack stronger but more likely to miss, plus you can make npcs mad easier
– Lazy: you are lazy. your morale can randomly go down if you work too hard.
– ADHD: you cant read for long periods of time. you have to get up and move around. Ritalin helps with this
– allergies: you have a random allergy. could be seasonal, could be a food type. you dont know what it is. you can sneeze and alert zombies. you need Claritin to control and some foods
can almost kill you without a shot.
– enlarged prostate: for our older survivors. you have to get up at night to use the bathroom.
Positive:
– Gym Rat (could call it roid freak): you are naturally stronger cause you work out all the time. you can strength quicker (see abuse train stats)
– runner: similiar to quick but you can train speed and get faster as the games on.
Game Gets Harder as you get stronger:
– Mobs can get stronger. Like in ADOM, if you kill mobs they get stronger. Will take alot of balance. So you never get uber powered.
– zombie hordes: for mid to late game. keep static spawns, but groups of zombies can spawn outside of town. zombies can attract other zombies and move across the map in a hoard. this forces you to make a strong shelter and/or car cause you can wake up with 100 zombies outside. to make later game more challenging
– breeders (from adom) some mobs can spawn other mobs. Similiar to zombie Necromancer, but it can actually spawn them
– zombie necromancer can raise zombies from graveyard corpses.
– dead corpses you find in the woods can animate after a while.
Various Starting locations
– challenge starting locations: from another thread. some recommend points based on where you start. Shelter is 0, LMOE shelt costs say 5, apartment in town with zombies around -6 (so you get points back), big prison with lots of zombies around -7 and so on.
New locations:
– mutant camp: when npcs get in. can be friendly or hostile. you can be a murderer and kill them. if you do this word gets out and all mutant camps go hostile near you. has lots of goodies. can trade. if you start as a mutant, human npcs may be hostile to you
– real life locations: someone else recommended this. i dont know new england well, but could add some iconic places, iconic stores, shops ,museaums, etc… Zombie filled Harvard would be cool… waste the preppies
Professions:
– college student: mommy and daddy sent you to college so you have some book skills. bonus to book learning
– Soldier: you are strong, you are army, but your not that bright. penalty to reading.
– Computer Programmer: your overweight, you have bad people skills, and you are a bit autistic. however you start with alot of computer,tech skills. See my post on overweight and food at top.
– politician: great people skills.
– Carpenter: start with skill in construction and survival
– Crazy, end of the world survivalist: you knew the end of the world was coming and by god you prepared. Its finally here and you cant weight. Bonus to several starting skills. however, you are averse to bathing so you get the smelly trait without the bonus points you get back.
– City kid: special bonus to combat skills when in the city. penalty in the woods
– security guard: overweight, potatoe chip munching rent a cop. negatives to dex, speed, overweight. get bonus points back
Crafting:
– i think you should be able to make a stone pot with level 2 survival. it takes too long to be able to make this. by the time you can you either died or you have found a frying pan or pot.
Archery: (alot of people did not like this)
– fatigue: you use a bow alot your arm gets tired. it actually would. so you dont do as well. as your skill with archery goes up you take less of a pentalty. strength lessens this penalty. Doesn’t happen as quick with crossobw
– bows are too rare to be found. you basically need to start with archery. ok you can find crossbows in crossbow traps, but you dont usually find bolts (I do occassionally) lying around. shooting a few crossbow shots takes a while to train this. not that common, but I rarely ever find them at all.
– archery is a little harder to train up than other skills. takes somewhat longer cause its stronger. it degrades a little faster too. I think a litle bit on this goes along way.
Skill changes:
– make advancement more gradual. make there a reason to get some skills to say 30. (maybe it wont be as hard to get the higher levels)
– skills at higher levels degrade a little faster. basically so you cant be great at everything. its like that now, but it doesn’t take that long to get some all the way maxxed.
Morale:
– there are very few pro-morale items. MP3 is the only reliable one.
– make MP3 auto-turn off at 50 morale bonus and can set to auto turn on
New Skills:
– stealth: not exactly sure how to train this. but it makes it harder for mobs to find you. could split it out to ‘city stealth’ and woods stealth. since the skills are a little different
if you surprise a mob with stealth you get bonus damage
More Melee stuff
– shields: for some reason no one uses a shield in zombie movies. I would think they might be useful. I would think those plastic clear ones are good cuase you can see through them and you are blocking unarmed guys
– swords: ok this isnt roleplaying, but they could exist. maybe have them available at museaums? or some houses with wierd guys who love swords
Themed Houses:
different people have different stuff. on a map all houses look alike, but inside them they could have themes such as
gun nut houses: lots of guns and ammo. maybe in a safe. maybe not
houses with swords
survivalist houses: lots of crappy end of the world food, supplies
houses with all junk food