Psychopath exceptions for 'bad idea' prompts/feedback

[Midaychi]

As in the title, if you get the psychopath trait, I’d figure it would be !fun! if it carried over to more mundane things as well. For example: Why can’t a psychopath read while driving? Sleep in the driver’s seat, or floor it while repairing the roof. Or walk through fires unhindered by normal common sense? Radioactive sludge? Bad idea my tentacle!

Just because it’s a bad idea doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, right?

[Darkfirephoenix]

[quote=“Midaychi, post:1, topic:8828”]As in the title, if you get the psychopath trait, I’d figure it would be !fun! if it carried over to more mundane things as well. For example: Why can’t a psychopath read while driving? Sleep in the driver’s seat, or floor it while repairing the roof. Or walk through fires unhindered by normal common sense? Radioactive sludge? Bad idea my tentacle!

Just because it’s a bad idea doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, right?[/quote]
That is a bit of a strange idea. Psychopaths have no problems with doing bad stuff and such, that is true, BUT that doesn’t mean that they will do stupid things, ESPECIALLY if it endangers themselfes.

In RL there are people with a mental disorder that prevents them of seeing dangers to themselfes, so they simply reach into a fire to get a thing, grab into a pot of boiling water etc. without ever thinking that it may be dangerous (I don’t know the name of the disorder though). This would be more in line with your suggestions.

Another disorder is a body disorder which prevents the person to feel pain AT ALL. Pain is a warning sign that something is bad for your body, but some ppl don’t feel pain and do the things I said earlier without directly understanding that it is bad for them. But they CAN see the dangers if they learned about them, so they will avoid doing such things but they may still accidentially put their hand on a hot hotplate because they lack the feeling of pain.

[chimpdroid]

I’d honestly like to see a starting trait that didn’t let the user feel pain, but also kept safe mode permanently disabled, so you could accidentally step in fire and dissectors n’ stuff. I feel like it would be difficult to program something to the extent of being able to repair stuff while driving though.

[Coolthulhu]

Removing warning prompts as a challenge would be one of the most egregious examples of bad game design in history of video games.

[KA101]

Removing warning prompts as a challenge would be one of the most egregious examples of bad game design in history of video games.

Concur. Most roguelikes make sport out of allowing the player to do fatal things because “obviously” the player should have known that they would be fatal, and the PC unquestioningly does the player’s bidding. This does a fine job of pissing off new players and making the genre look bad. DDA’s active prompting against such mistakes is a major reason I stuck around long enough to get into dev.

[kevin.granade]

I have a little bit of sympathy for other roguelikes being that way, but they also usually concentrate on an “every keypress counts” game design with small levels, forcing functions to move on, etc. With ridiculously expansive areas and frequently not being able to see the entire play area, not prompting for dangers would be absurd.

[Straume21]

On a related note, I feel like the psychopath trait is a little bit unbalanced.

I think that in general, the character shouldn’t feel bad for killing zombie children or NPCs that haven’t initiated combat.

Looking at Bethesda and the development of a morality system into their games, the games that they developed without “karma” or “morality” in the game were more enjoyable to me.

As far as Cataclysm goes, I think it’s reasonable to assume that the terms of morality change significantly when someone is put into a survivor-situation, and just because they kill an NPC or a zombie child without feeling remorse doesn’t mean that they are indefinitely psychotic.

I think it would be much more balanced if the player had the option of selecting a disadvantageous “Empathetic” trait that made them feel bad about doing these things (morale penalty for killing NPCs and zombie children) that gave the player points into the character creation, instead of automatically being empathetic towards these things and having to pay 2 points out of the character creation in order to have their character feel okay after killing an NPC that just threatened them.

In a survival-situation, it’s difficult to tell where the line is between right and wrong in these situations. If my character has to be a Psychopath in order to have a clear conscience after eliminating a clear threat to their existence, then I guess that would make me a Psychopath, too? And a lot of people that are currently undiagnosed and are sufferers of this psychological disorder.

[Burnt_Earth]

I think ‘psychopath’ should give a morale bonus for killing any human-like creature, like zombies and whatnot. Maybe a +1 bonus for an hour per, so you just have a hell of a lot of fun flamthrowering the mall or something? Maybe call it ‘Zealous’ or something if it only applies to hostile, non-human entities.

Then it should negate morale penalties for killing other things like zombie kids or I imagine, NPCs in the future.
Pacifist should be the reverse, but they would’nt have much of a penalty for say, killing a giant centipede or zombear. Maybe every creature should have some sort of morality penalty assigned to it based on it’s qualities. Normal survivors and even reluctant survivors might even feel good after killing something/ someone particularly wretched.

I think if there is an sanity system implemented, really low scores of sanity should stop the (y/n) prompts so you guzzle bleach, eat tainted meat (rotten) and walk into pits and raging fires just because you pressed the key wrong and self-inflict injuries if you accidentally (f)ire into you’re own tile. Other rougelikes do stuff like that, it’s something worth copying, imo.

[MormonPartyboat]

I think it would be much more balanced if the player had the option of selecting a disadvantageous “Empathetic” trait that made them feel bad about doing these things (morale penalty for killing NPCs and zombie children) that gave the player points into the character creation, instead of automatically being empathetic towards these things and having to pay 2 points out of the character creation in order to have their character feel okay after killing an NPC that just threatened them.

What about a one point ‘deadened’ trait that decreases the morale penalty and increases the rate of morale penalty decay from killing? And an ‘empathetic’ negative trait that does the opposite?

[KA101]

[quote=“Straume21, post:7, topic:8828”]I think it would be much more balanced if the player had the option of selecting a disadvantageous “Empathetic” trait that made them feel bad about doing these things (morale penalty for killing NPCs and zombie children) that gave the player points into the character creation, instead of automatically being empathetic towards these things and having to pay 2 points out of the character creation in order to have their character feel okay after killing an NPC that just threatened them.

What about a one point ‘deadened’ trait that decreases the morale penalty and increases the rate of morale penalty decay from killing? And an ‘empathetic’ negative trait that does the opposite?[/quote]

KA101 notes that all his builds would take Empathetic

Deadened is a post-thresh Medical mutation, where there’s no earthly way for the PC to feel pain. (By this time you should have picked up some type of masochism, too. They coexist.)