Repetitive behaviors do get really boring. It may be exciting to care about character’s well being at first, but then it becomes just another “‘e’->‘y’->wait 10 seconds->done” that you have to do every x minutes.
DDA has a lot of wonderful stuff for new players already. But 80% of all this stuff becomes meaningless when you realize it is just another variable to track.
So if hygiene is to actually mean something, it should be considered not just as something people do, but something ‘@’ (or a sprite) on the screen does.
For example: health system (vitamins beat everything), martial arts (2-3 are good, rest is filler and a noob trap), armoring (almost everything below 90% coverage is a noob trap).
Except the above aren’t very tedious - once you figure out how to do it, you can do it right. It only hurts new players who don’t know the best solutions. A badly implemented hygiene system (ie. one concerned only with simulation and not gameplay) could hurt everyone by being a major annoyance.
tl;dr Simulators also need gameplay[/quote]
Hold on a second… are you actually defending those elements of the game where 80% of the options are complete crap? Like, you think that’s actually a good thing, and there should be more of it?
Because that’s generally regarded as terrible, terrible design. Godawful. Only slightly better than leaving in game-crashing bugs because the established user base knows how not to trigger them.
If an option is not worth taking, it should be made to be worth taking or it should not be there. Niche uses and specialities are fine, as are deliberate challenge options (provided they are clearly described as such), but “noob traps?” No way.
The only people who are justified in thinking that’s a good idea are the kind of superpro jerks who respond to new players with “git gud, scrub,” or if you’re Wizards of the Coast and you need useless filler for your booster packs.
While I agree there are some “noob trap” elements in the game, such as the wide range of martial arts that are not in any way equal and should be made more so, many of the redundancies are actually more there fro special circumstances, such as only having certain materials available, especially if a horde separates you from all your goodies or some such, but you still have all your skills. (referring mostly to crafting here) And many are in place more for authenticity than actual which is best. (not that some of those don’t still need some work to be more balanced as well) In most cases like this you are better just describing where and how the problem isn’t balanced so that the mods can get to it, or learning to code/mod yourself and doing the fix, and having the mods github it into the main game. Cata is pretty open coded after all, for that very reason.
[quote=“Derpular, post:21, topic:9154”]Hold on a second… are you actually defending those elements of the game where 80% of the options are complete crap? Like, you think that’s actually a good thing, and there should be more of it?
Because that’s generally regarded as terrible, terrible design. Godawful. Only slightly better than leaving in game-crashing bugs because the established user base knows how not to trigger them.
If an option is not worth taking, it should be made to be worth taking or it should not be there. Niche uses and specialities are fine, as are deliberate challenge options (provided they are clearly described as such), but “noob traps?” No way.
The only people who are justified in thinking that’s a good idea are the kind of superpro jerks who respond to new players with “git gud, scrub,” or if you’re Wizards of the Coast and you need useless filler for your booster packs.[/quote]
I disagree. A simulation is better when it aproximates the situation better.
When you simulate a *feature doesn t need to provide any benefit to the player.
You can do a shit ton of things irl that provide next to nothing of use. Theres no reason other then simulation to implement it. But unless a good reason is given to better dda overall (as what is is suposed be by the design outline) i see no reason for removing options.
The best reason i see to change or remove a feature is in order to make it more believable “realistic”
Sure.
I ll deffinatly keep voicing my opinion till alls awesome or i get bored die.
And irl you ll get used to beeing dirty and will therefor not sufer much moral penalty.
The chance to get infected and spread disease stay the same though. But a person exposed to things like that will probably get hardier meaning if they do not die of it they ll get healthier (in terms of an intrinsic value not to be confused with beeing in a healthy condition as an outside factor like beeing dirty) as long as they are well fed.
So it ll probably not be much of a problem.
true, my understanding is that many europeans tend to bath once a week, instead of once a day+ like many americans. Although this may be total bullshit since many European countries are well known for their communal bathhouses.
Removing options that you’d only take if you didn’t know any better is a good reason in and of itself.
If you want to argue realism, managing hygiene is realistic.
If you want to argue gameplay, you’ll need a better argument than coolthulhu’s “good gameplay is that which can be ignored once you’re not a noob.”
Ok lets yay or nay them individually. Derpular please give a single instances and everyone else yay or nay it with reasons why. When everyone done with that one Derpular throw a new thing into the battle arena.
Nope. I’m warning against adding elements that will immediately go to that 80%. Badly done hygiene system would fit there.
Way to misunderstand the argument.
It isn’t good when you can ignore it. It is incredibly bad when you only want to ignore it, but can’t. For example, a hygiene system that forces you to go through 3 menus every time you wake up or get bashed by a dirty zombie.
Rituals and routine are really bad gameplay.
I think there is potential in a hygiene system, especially if it is only optional from the start menu, but I am having greater trouble finding a valid enough reason to do so. Making a “you took a shower/bath” moral boost seems like the best way to get something in the area started without messing up anything else or making it excessive coding. Could be done in rivers, and custom built showering rigs. Are you normally going to need/use it? probably not, but if you just got done dodging a horde for several days and ate some creep to keep your strength up, a shower to give a moral boost to counter act ate creep penalty would be time, and water costly, but might give you enough moral to start crafting again. Does it normally fall into the 80% of the options are crap category? yes. But are you going to be glad to have it as an option when you REALLY need it to be able to keep alive…Hell yes.
Nope. I’m warning against adding elements that will immediately go to that 80%. Badly done hygiene system would fit there.
Way to misunderstand the argument.
It isn’t good when you can ignore it. It is incredibly bad when you only want to ignore it, but can’t. For example, a hygiene system that forces you to go through 3 menus every time you wake up or get bashed by a dirty zombie.
Rituals and routine are really bad gameplay.[/quote]
Everything you just said also applies to hunger, thirst, and sleep. And clothing. And hordes, actually - I’m usually forced to bash through three zombies every time I wake up or use a dirty menu.
Besides, if you’d actually read my post you’ll see that I mention you CAN ignore it, at the cost of some morale penalty while you become acclimatized.
[quote=“Derpular, post:31, topic:9154”]Everything you just said also applies to hunger, thirst, and sleep. And clothing. And hordes, actually - I’m usually forced to bash through three zombies every time I wake up or use a dirty menu.
Besides, if you’d actually read my post you’ll see that I mention you CAN ignore it, at the cost of some morale penalty while you become acclimatized.[/quote]
So instead of fixing hunger, thirst and sleep, better add another mechanic that shares it’s problems? Except this time with an even weaker effect. Oh, and with an effect that decreases over time.
You can turn off hordes. Them being tedious is one of the reasons why they are optional. They should actually be dangerous, but my ideas on how to achieve it all got either shot down with “no because some players die to zombies already” or ignored.
When adding new features, it’s a good idea to think of the ones that are already good rather than picking a bad one and saying “this new one doesn’t suck harder than this”.
Hygiene system that grants some minor morale penalty/boost or a small chance for wounds to get infected would be both trivial to ignore and tedious to deal with when someone choses not to ignore it. So basically the worst parts of hunger system, except amplified.
Ok lets all just agree that fixing existing problems is priority to a hygiene system we haven’t fully thought out yet, and move on. What you have up next for us?
I lobbied hard to get the hygiene system implemented, but I honestly don’t think it will ever happen.
The idea of the game, as I see it, isn’t necessarily to make a realistic simulation, but a challenging game that puts the player in a hypothetical (and very far-fetched) situation.
The reason that we have a kind of ‘realism’ in the game isn’t necessarily to make it ‘just like it would be in real life,’ but to make it difficult, not grinding.
I definitely think that for some players, the hygiene system definitely would be a grind, because they don’t particularly care about that aspect of the hypothetical situation.
At the end of the day, if you really would like there to be penalties for hygiene, you can either code it yourself, or impose your own morale penalty on your character. All morale does it stop you from crafting, basically. If you want to see what it will be like, just don’t craft anything after a few days until you are able to get some soap and water to “wash” yourself. Balance it in your own head and set rules for yourself.
I personally don’t care about thinking about it that much, but if you do, then go ahead and pretend.
After all, this game is basically an RPG, and one that guides you through a set of circumstances that you are able to influence, but the real game isn’t on the screen with the characters or icons moving around, it’s in your imagination anyways. The fun of the game is imagining the situation, not playing it to win. There is no winning, there are no goals.
But anyways, there are numerous unrealistic elements in the game that we have already accepted as a part of the game, such as zombies and crazy monsters and mutations, so I don’t think it’s necessarily in our favor to push hard for as much realism as we can have, because this isn’t reality, no matter how hard we try to make it a simulation, it’s not. It’s a game, so enjoy it or change it yourself.
well put. Perhaps the game should divide into 2 modes? Realistic, and Game Mode? Of coarse you can still edit all the settings to whatever you want but having two different “presets” might help with various realism vs gaming fun arguments.
A cataclysm based on real world physics with the nether added to it. So everything that hasn t been touched by that should behave like irl.
because there are zombies doesn t mean that the game can t be realistic as in simulate everything else believable. Think like Rl with 50% more zombies.
Wouldn t mean that youd not need to eat all of a sudden.