Redundant professions

[kevin.granade]

Gambling = startscumming = pointless

[infectedmochi]

I don’t believe in startcumming (read: I don’t do it) in roguelikes or any other game in general. But I don’t think it’s pointless, it’s a singleplayer game, startcumming is possible and you want to do it, why not? If someone enjoy startcumming to get better bionics/equipments/gears, I don’t see why we should stop them.
Maybe there are other reasons to this, if there are please explain them to me why you think startcumming is pointless.

[kevin.granade]

What I mean is having character traits with random elements encourages startscumming, and therefore don’t do what you intend.

In practice “random bionic” actually means “startscum until I get the one I want”, you might as well just let the player chose the bionic they want. This is actually how it used to work, there was an “android” trait that gave you a random bionic, and it ranged from useless to ridiculously OP. If you didn’t startscum, it was actually punitive, because there are more unusable CBMs than desirable ones.

Worse, if you have a trait with random results, it gives tacit encouragement to startscum whereas e.g. debug menu abuse is obviously not normal play.

Now a fully random character is another thing entirely, that’s probably someone that actually wants to play a randomized character (like me), and it’s not practical to startscum until you get a particular loadout, but that also means you don’t give the random character things that can’t be selected manually.

[GlyphGryph]

Gambling = startscumming = pointless

Except many people enjoy a certain amount of gambling, and don’t plan on start scumming it. I know I do. But as you mentioned, we already have a way to create a completely random character and then decide whether or not we are happy with them before playing.

I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing that sort of system improved - what would you think of a bionic system where it was just “weighted roll, three random bionics, you can see it and decide whether you want to keep it”? Because I’ve found that’s honestly the sort of ‘scumming’ that people actually enjoy doing. Sort of like selecting a random name… which I sometimes do many times just to watch them go by, and think to myself “damn, I should have went with that last one! Well, I guess this one works” but it’s still fun.

Hell, the bionics could even cost points, once we add in the difficulty system mentioned previously where there’s no point cap, just an easier difficulty description, and I’d be happy with something that.

Right now there’s no way to get random bionics, even with a purely random character, and that’s something some people miss because they enjoyed having the option.

[Binky]

I have to disagree with GlyphGryph, I think startscumming is a big problem. DCSS got rid of all starting randomness because of that, and I think it drastically improved things. There’s no way to build a coherent difficulty curve if someone can start with a recycler unit if they spend enough time scumming, and I think many people (especially as DDA is difficult) would spend the time repeatedly and annoyingly (for them) restarting just to get the ones they want so they can progress, instead of actually playing the game. Yeah, it is their own fault for wasting their time, but I think it cheapens the game no end if it’s possible to easily scum it.

As far as professions go, they are a complete mess at the moment - there’s far too many, and they’re completely unbalanced, with most being just slightly different clothes which doesn’t really do much in an ASCII (or limited tiles) based game. I’d say have professions only affect starting equipment (until scenarios or starting placement is available) and redoing the point allocation would be a great step in the right direction.

[Brian_Lefler]

Current pricing punishes most choices. We should not be charging people 1 point for a lab coat or a cane or a golf club, and we shouldn’t be rewarding them 1 point for giving up clothes they can find on their first zombie kill or a cigarette habit they can wait out in a day. Personally I think alcoholic or naked would make for interesting negative traits, but hobo and shower victim let you exceed the normal point limitation on negative traits, so they’re heavily rewarded.

I would love to see a system that could offer a strong narrative and a radically different play experiences by varying starting gear and locking most of your points into a set of attribute, trait, and skill choices so you can’t just fallback to your usual style. What we currently have is ~40 professions that vary your clothing and possibly give 1-2 skill points or 1 useful piece of gear (sewing kit, first aid, leather). I think that’s falling really short of the goal. No particular one profession seems actively harmful, but it’s a lot of clutter when you add them all up.

[system]

[quote=“Brian Lefler, post:26, topic:3799”]Current pricing punishes most choices. We should not be charging people 1 point for a lab coat or a cane or a golf club, and we shouldn’t be rewarding them 1 point for giving up clothes they can find on their first zombie kill or a cigarette habit they can wait out in a day. Personally I think alcoholic or naked would make for interesting negative traits, but hobo and shower victim let you exceed the normal point limitation on negative traits, so they’re heavily rewarded.

I would love to see a system that could offer a strong narrative and a radically different play experiences by varying starting gear and locking most of your points into a set of attribute, trait, and skill choices so you can’t just fallback to your usual style. What we currently have is ~40 professions that vary your clothing and possibly give 1-2 skill points or 1 useful piece of gear (sewing kit, first aid, leather). I think that’s falling really short of the goal. No particular one profession seems actively harmful, but it’s a lot of clutter when you add them all up.[/quote]

[tt]Indeed which is why I hope to temporarily change this by creating personalized starting professions (which I will refer to as role and or scenarios) that feature some custom equipment and fluff/flavor items. All for a modest point cost of 0.[/tt]

[vultures]

I would love to see a system that could offer a strong narrative and a radically different play experiences by varying starting gear and locking most of your points into a set of attribute, trait, and skill choices so you can't just fallback to your usual style. What we currently have is ~40 professions that vary your clothing and possibly give 1-2 skill points or 1 useful piece of gear (sewing kit, first aid, leather). I think that's falling really short of the goal. No particular one profession seems actively harmful, but it's a lot of clutter when you add them all up.

Actually, this needs to be seconded. Classic RPG elements in pretty much most of the respectable RL endeavors throw this exact ball at you in the start. You're granted a bundle of skills, bonuses along with them and a thing or two to wield and wear. Making this better and transparent along the way is the way to store this and forget about it. I think it wouldn't be as wrong as implying classes with CataDDA to just review the list of items @ current and correct some of the professions accordingly; the rebalance should come along the way Just keep in mind that even in Dungeon Crawl you are awarded some class traits, but no uneven tools for the trait. If you're a wizard, you still have to hack&slash your way to a really useful book or a wand.

[Binky]

I think the scenarios will address this by putting you in a specific situation with specific gear and skills, but I’d hate to lose the flexibility of being able to do a custom character (which I doubt is going away) and starting gear is integral to that (and picking your own wouldn’t be a good idea).
To rework current professions, cutting out the skill point assignment and just leaving it as starting equipment (and getting rid of a good half of them) would make start up a lot cleaner and easier to balance - perhaps you could get an extra few points for starting as ‘normal’ or naked, whilst all the rest were largely positive. For ‘negative’ ones such as starting as a junkie, you could also get other drugs to make it a better balance, but things like starting as a smoker is practically useless and just adds clutter.

I know some people want to role play, but this shouldn’t be at the expense of good design.

[Turtlicious]

Here’s a question, why not make your starting gear tied to your skills instead of professions?

IE: If I invest a point into tailoring, I’ll start with a sewing kit. If I invest a point into mechanics, I’ll have a wrench. Fabrication = Crowbar, Etc, etc. This allows more customized play, (I want to be a hacker with a backpack!) and gives people tighter control over their character.

[Binky]

[quote=“Turtlicious, post:30, topic:3799”]Here’s a question, why not make your starting gear tied to your skills instead of professions?

IE: If I invest a point into tailoring, I’ll start with a sewing kit. If I invest a point into mechanics, I’ll have a wrench. Fabrication = Crowbar, Etc, etc. This allows more customized play, (I want to be a hacker with a backpack!) and gives people tighter control over their character.[/quote]

I think this is a fantastic idea, it’d help make it a lot more balanced and also get rid of the tedium of making basic items that you’re going to use as you’ve already indicated you want that pathway. It would need careful thought though, as some (like a short bow for archery) is easily craft-able in your own shelter, whilst a gun/bullets for firearms (what else could you really give them!?) would be much more useful.

[Brian_Lefler]

I think this is a fantastic idea, it’d help make it a lot more balanced and also get rid of the tedium of making basic items that you’re going to use as you’ve already indicated you want that pathway. It would need careful thought though, as some (like a short bow for archery) is easily craft-able in your own shelter, whilst a gun/bullets for firearms (what else could you really give them!?) would be much more useful.

+1 for the idea. I think you can balance it, just give better things the more points spent on a skill. The first point can give something minor/cosmetic (chef’s hat, butcher’s knife, etc), or nothing at all. When someone’s spending multiple points in rifles, giving them a .22 rifle isn’t game breaking. Right now the advice seems to be to put all your irreplaceable development points into attributes, giving you a leg up would definitely encourage spending on skills.

[kevin.granade]

This line of reasoning is precisely what ended up with professions. Implementation wise it’s basically impossible to balance skill bonuses that give items, because the items have wildly differing levels of usefulness, so you would have to hard-code the points cost of the items into buying skills, which makes buying skills incredibly inconsistent. Also handing out items with skills makes for cookie-cutter, unrealistic characters because every player with tailoring skill starts with a sewing kit, every character with firearms skill starts with a basic gun, etc. If you elaborate the system until you work past these problems, boom, you have professions.

[Binky]

This line of reasoning is precisely what ended up with professions. Implementation wise it’s basically impossible to balance skill bonuses that give items, because the items have wildly differing levels of usefulness, so you would have to hard-code the points cost of the items into buying skills, which makes buying skills incredibly inconsistent. Also handing out items with skills makes for cookie-cutter, unrealistic characters because every player with tailoring skill starts with a sewing kit, every character with firearms skill starts with a basic gun, etc. If you elaborate the system until you work past these problems, boom, you have professions.

This was the problem I foresaw with this. However, after thinking through the different skills, I don’t think it’d be too bad if they were hardcoded.

If you only got items on the second level, that’s quite a lot of points to put in, and certain skills could gain more than one item. For instance tailoring could come with sewing kit and a few leather strips, whilst archery could come with a longbow and some arrows, mechanic with a welder and welding goggles and so on and so forth. Obviously some (like dodging) would be difficult to give you much for, and some may still remain weaker skills (like cooking) but it’d be better than lots of useless professions which are only differentiated on flavour alone.

[Weyrling]

Some of us like different flavors, why does it all have to be gameplay/competitive/balance oriented?

Professions might need an overhaul in content but that doesn’t mean we should scrap the system, but I can see why the profession system as implemented isn’t particularly great.

Personally, I’m looking forward to what STD comes up with, he’s posted several times in this thread with some good ideas.

[Binky]

Some of us like different flavors, why does it all have to be gameplay/competitive/balance oriented?

I have absolutely no problem (and really like!) non competitive/gameplay based flavour, but currently the professions do absolutely nothing other than a few where you start with weird clothing (which is pretty much only in name). To me, that adds a ridiculously small, if not completely negligible, amount of flavour. I wouldn’t be adversed to professions being completely unbalanced, as long as they bought real flavour (for instance a lumberjack starting in a cabin with an axe), but currently they just do nothing meaningful either balanced or unbalanced (bar a few bionic ones).

The Skills/items idea mentioned is a completely different and more flexible system, but upgraded professions may well be better. How about if professions were like completely premade chars with set stats/skills ect.? You could perhaps have 2-3 points left over to give yourself a bit of flexibility, but otherwise they’d be locked in?

[Weyrling]

The Skills/items idea mentioned is a completely different and more flexible system, but upgraded professions may well be better. How about if professions were like completely premade chars with set stats/skills ect.? You could perhaps have 2-3 points left over to give yourself a bit of flexibility, but otherwise they’d be locked in?

That sounds pretty interesting, actually.

My opinion is basically that this is the first implementation of a professions system, and some people seem to want to change the system rather than rework it.
I think asking ‘what were you before the apocalypse?’ is a necessary question in character generation.

[Binky]

I think asking ‘what were you before the apocalypse?’ is a necessary question in character generation.

Couldn’t agree more. I think it’s an integral roleplaying aspect (as long as you are also allowed to build a char. more manually) and I would like to see a much better professions system, but I can’t see ways in which it could be developed without being fundamentally changed.

It either has to be about objects, starting placement or skills/attributes (and a combination obviously). I imagine that scenarios will be mostly placement bnased, so having a ‘random/shelter’ start with a profession would be more about object and skills/attributes more than anything else really. Obviously, if Cata became more roleplaying in nature, with conversations and NPC’s and so forth, then professions could definitely go back to being more thematic, but currently I feel they need to be more functional.

[Brian_Lefler]

Isn’t all of character creation about answering what you were before the apocalypse?

There are so many answers to that question, we cannot possible fit them all into a flat list of professions. With that as the goal, it isn’t surprising that we’ve created 52 professions and you still can’t create a chain-smoking mechanic.

I would much rather be trying to answer that question with skills and traits, and reserve professions for “This will offer a dramatically different playing experience and cannot be done within the rest of the system”. I don’t think we need a profession for fast food clerk and a chef when someone can take cooking at 2 or cooking at 4 to indicate that’s what their job was.

The cost to clutter is that people don’t engage with the system. I suspect most players are just taking Unemployed or a profession that gives them points, and taking skills if they want a backstory in their past jobs. I know that’s what I’ve done. A former fast food cook conquering the wasteland is an appealing concept, but I can do that with Unemployed and cooking 2, rather than spending the same on a profession to get cooking 1 and a pair of socks.

[system]

[tt]Some ideas I have just are not possible by editing json files, which is unfortunate. As it stands, nothing is stopping anyone from adding their own ‘profession’, giving it the items, skills, and addictions they think they character would start with. Temporary solutions though, I hope.[/tt]