Fallout Tactics had this fun thing called Tough Guy mode. You could save only between missions, as opposed to being able to save at any time, but you gained double XP(!). Sounds like a balancebreaker but it really wasn’t, not in that game. Something like that might be fun for Cata. Not XP, but maybe unique locations and gear. After you defeat or conquer the unique locations, you get the option to turn off the permadeath, but you could only do it once. That would still give an incentive for the cowa… puss… lily-liv… ehhh, the more careful adventurers to boldly go where they haven’t really gone before, just to get the damn permadeath turned off. True hardcore FUNdamentalist roguelikers would still of course keep their setting after cleaning the locations with a rotten wooden sword, blindfolded. So basically everyone starts out with permadeath, but later you’d have the option to enable a form of immortality aka respawning.
The subsequent respawn location would be the initial starting location at game start, and the location could be changed later by the player.
So there could be like 3 unique locations, each containing a unique component, and by assembling an item out of them you’d enable respawning, be that item a quantum wi-fi cloning pod, or an automated emergency teleport hooked to a portable bio-monitor, or whatever. Of course there could be a cost to respawning such as losing skills (memories) and the item carried in hands, and maybe few other random items from the inventory, dropped on the death site… together with certain hats or eyeglasses that just won’t stay on, goddamnit.
A potentially fun thing about the respawner might be that it too could be a limited-use item, such as having an increasing chance to fail after each successful use. So its fail chances would start out like 0%, 0%, 0%, 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 10%, 15%… 100%
Honestly I’d be okay with cloning in a one-off “Amulet of Lifesaving” kind of way. Special cloning centric lab bottoms contain prototype cloning machines with a neural link headset. You can interact with the device and try to succeed at a complex series of skill rolls - Cooking, Computers, First Aid, various chemicals, blob globs, and a Vacutainer with your blood in it. You won’t know how well you did until “the big day”, so it’s quite possibly you die regardless. It also takes at least a month to be ready.
You wear the headset, when you die, so long as the link-up is in perfect condition, all the checks went well, and your clone has matured, then your mind is uploaded to your clone. The neural link headset only works to a single cloning machine (found together) and each cloning machine is effectively one-use, since the player will never have the ability to “reload it”.
Your clone respawns with no equipment, has a high chance of developing a bunch of random mutations from the cloning process unless you performed all the checks very well, and has a risk for each skill to immediately lose a full skill level. The player decides to grab their gear or die forever.
Well, either that or a soul gem. Create a soul gem through [hideous dark arts], when a hapless New Character finds it and foolishly uses it, it overwrites them, replacing their skills, mind, and name with those of the revived character. Soul gem atomises, you move on with your inherited stuff.
You can already technically “respawn” on the IOS version at least (Haven’t tried it on PC yet) by saving, dying, closing the Cataclysm DDA app instead of writing your last words, opening the app again, and loading your save file. You’ll respawn next to your own dead body that way.
but i mean, im the kind of guy who played minecraft on hardcore when building for fun.
back in 2001 i was playing halo and starcraft on their hardest setting with a playerenforced ironman challenge. as in, I called it the ‘one life challenge’.
pedit:
i used to try to save every marine. level 2 is a bitch for that but doable if you are aggressive.
the flood level isnt, though. ive managed to at best save 3 of them. johnson, and 2 grunts.
buuut, tbf, every black guy in halo ce is johnson.
but id restart if i lost too many marines in my ironman legendary difficulty game. as a 12yrold.
My opinion on the topic of respawning is really odd. I sometimes savescum (which is basically cata’s version of checkpoints), but it depends on the character. Sometimes I’ll set rules for myself for specific characters, such as, you can only savescum for the first day/until you get your first gun/until you get a base, and for some characters I just play clean and die within the first hour as the developers intended.
I’ve experimented with reloading the same character into the same world when I die, but that can lead to my characters finding their own corpses, which is kind of cheaty…
I’m generally against making saves tied into game mechanics, unless the game is designed from the start to function with that in mind. CDDA was built from it’s roots with save-on-quit and permadeath as the save mechanic of choice.
Example of save/respawn mechanics-tied-to-gameplay working well due to preplanning: Dark Souls
Example of why tying save mechanics to gameplay after the fact is a way to make everyone angry: The entire section of bethesda’s forums dedicated to Fallout 4’s ‘Survival mode’, which features saving disabled except for when you sleep. This feature nearly started world war four over how saving ought to/ought not to be implemented and I don’t think anybody came out happy.
tl;dr: It’d be too much work to get right with the current setup.
You’d have to overhaul a significant portion of CDDA’s game style to make a saving feature balanced, reasonable, intuitive, or even remotely desirable by the majority of the userbase. I am not opposed to a new gameplay type, but build the new gametype around the save function, don’t build the save function into the current game.
I’m against it. It is a roguelike game, permadeath makes the choices meaningful. Many aspect of the game is already a babysitting, it would be just another nail in the coffin.
If there would be a story then i could accept very rare, one time resurrection items as it is in the nethack and the don’t starve games, but without story the resurrection has no meaning because you don’t have to risk your life purposively.
I just wish you could save without having to exit the game. Right now you either have to save exit quit and then launch again or you have to turn on to be asked to save before sleeping. Honestly if there was a save before sleeping but don’t ask me option I would use it.
HEHE latest build has it in the new [esc] triggered options screen. I found it because i was looking for options which has been moved. But there she is a quicksave
