Open-world vs. Goal-based games

[Valpo]

Oh la vache! I would say its better to implement it properly so i agree … something like that ~

[EditorRUS]

Here’re my ideas:
There are few kinds of endings:

1. “Cure” the infection.
   The plot:
   In order to stop the infection - you need to tear space and time and destroy its source before the events happened. Incredibly hard. There is only ONE such science lab in a world which is marked as “source”. That can be done by sending mininukes through the time and space. In order to tear space and time, you need to find SPAWNED portal (a portal not made by you), make some measures (require insane amount of intelligence and skills, also experimental things from the bottom of some lab) and make STP (Space-Time portal) CBM out of Time Dilation CBM, few teleporters, lots of plutonium cells, data from measurements, two special kinds of artifacts. After you built and installed the CBM, you need to find the lab. In order to do that, you need to read lots of text to find clues: coordinate numbers (X2:YZ), special features (broken car near the entrance), references to other clues. Player have to find this lab by gathering clues and going/searching for it. After Player has found this lab, he enters there and reaches the deepest level. Now, in order to finish the game, Player needs to perform sending mininukes through the time.

2. Player activates STP CBM

3. Player plants some amount of mininukes around the portal (4 is enough)

4. Player activates STP CBM once again, sending mininukes back in time. 25% of ALL ENEMIES are killed for every 1 mininuke. Also, now game sets the chance of (25%*(mininukes)) any enemy spawning to be dead. When 100% of enemies is killed - the game has been won.
   STP CBM activating does next as follows:

5. Makes a 240x240 (10x10 map tiles) tiles “snapshot” of current game state at current turn.

6. Makes a tear of reality. Entering there will make game to insert saved state. Affects everything except NPCs and player.

7. Activating STP CBM one more time will do the same.
   The hardest ending to obtain and thus its “Happy ending”

8. Destroy the infection.
   Pretty easy ending.
   All you need to do is to make next scheme:
   XXX
   XYX
   XXX

Where X is any portal, and Y is activated mininuke. When the mininuke is exploded - the game is won.
Plot: Mininuke has activated “Space resonance”, raising mininuke explosion strength million times. Everything is destroyed. It was not usual nuclear explosion, it was pure gravity blast - space-time distortion. Everything in 2 500 km is shattered like a glass - molecular bonds are broken. The planet is lifeless now. Everything were either broken on molecular level or crushed because of gravity.
"You managed to destroy the infection by destroying all life on the Earth"
Obviously, that’s bad end.

[Valpo]

time travel ~ its even less understandable then dimensional travel … id rather stay clear of using it as a plot device.

[Maur]

Looks like I’ve avoided a solid lambasting for now, so I’ll just add this: A primary comparison I had drawn was with Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup.

This is not Crawl. Crawl belons to the opposite kinds of roguelikes, goal driven, like nethack or angband, unlike dwarf fortress or cataclysm which are sandbox games.

Ant they should not be mixed. Crawl is horribly boring if you dont play it as intended (and crawl devs go to great lenghts to make the game awful unless you are following the main quest), and in dwarf fortress you can seal yourself on first month and never ever face even a slightest danger.

You cannot have endgame conent in the second kind because there is no endgame, which is intended.

[Wanderer]

There’s ONE way of doing an endgame and keeping Cataclysm open-world: doing an endgame that doesn’t end anything, but can be considered an ending.

It’s the method used both in Minecraft and EVO: Search For Eden(SNES game, recommend it). In both, you have paths that take you to sort of an ending. In Minecraft, going to the End and fighting the Ender Dragon; in EVO… i won’t spoil, but it’s a choice, not a battle.

In both cases, you can keep playing after the endgame, and nothing changed because of the ending. Killing the Ender Dragon doesn’t change anything in the Minecraft world, let’s say… joining with the sharks and dominating the prehistorical oceans in EVO shows you an ending and throws you back to before that choice, making it effectless, UNLESS you want an ending to your story, in that case, it’s a good point to consider it “ended” and leave it.

[Valpo]

And thus we shall call it lategame content.

[KA101]

[quote=“Wanderer, post:25, topic:8058”]There’s ONE way of doing an endgame and keeping Cataclysm open-world: doing an endgame that doesn’t end anything, but can be considered an ending.

It’s the method used both in Minecraft and EVO: Search For Eden(SNES game, recommend it). In both, you have paths that take you to sort of an ending. In Minecraft, going to the End and fighting the Ender Dragon; in EVO… i won’t spoil, but it’s a choice, not a battle.

In both cases, you can keep playing after the endgame, and nothing changed because of the ending. Killing the Ender Dragon doesn’t change anything in the Minecraft world, let’s say… joining with the sharks and dominating the prehistorical oceans in EVO shows you an ending and throws you back to before that choice, making it effectless, UNLESS you want an ending to your story, in that case, it’s a good point to consider it “ended” and leave it.[/quote]

Had considered that for the Mycus. In a funk at the moment so not much getting done.

EVO has those as bad endings–there’s a final endgame, too. Agreed that it’s a nifty game but cartridge is probably the most expensive I’ve ever seen, at $120 or so on resale.