The complexity of this game has surpassed non-optional permadeath

Game Talk The Drawing Board
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[quote=“Adrian, post:16, topic:5464”][quote=“fishy1234555, post:14, topic:5464”]SANDBOX GAME

EDIT: So that means yes in case that was unclear.[/quote]
Cata is an open world game not a sandbox game.
And because sandbox games have no goal to them it should never become a sandbox game.[/quote]
Actually, open-world games and sandbox games are generally the same thing.
[move][size=14pt]WARNING: THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT IS COPY-PASTED FROM A ONLINE DICTIONARY.[/size][/move]
A sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will. In contrast to a progression-style game, a sandbox game emphasizes roaming and allows a gamer to select tasks. Instead of featuring segmented areas or numbered levels, a sandbox game usually occurs in a “world” to which the gamer has full access from start to finish.

A sandbox game is also known as an open-world or free-roaming game.

[spoiler=More of the stuff from the website.]
Gamers play sandbox games according to their preference. These games include structured elements - such as mini-games, tasks, submissions and storylines - that may be ignored by gamers. In fact, the sandbox game’s nonlinear nature creates storyline challenges for game designers. For this reason, tasks and side missions usually follow a progression, where tasks are unlocked upon successful task completion.

Sandbox game types vary. Massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) generally include a mixture of sandbox and progression gaming and heavily depend on emergent interactive user gameplay for retaining non-progression-focused gamers. Modern “beat 'em ups” and first-person shooters have delved more deeply into the sandbox realm with titles like the “Grand Theft Auto” series, “Red Dead Redemption,” “Assassin’s Creed” and others, allowing gamers to run and gun wherever the mood takes them.

In spite of their name, various sandbox games continue to impose restrictions at some stages of the game environment. This can be due the game’s design limitations, or can be a short-run, in-game limitations, such as some locked areas in games that will be unlocked once certain milestones are achieved.[/spoiler]

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Well, because I want the feature myself, really. It’s done, I’m not going to link the PR here though.

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Well, because I want the feature myself, really. It’s done, I’m not going to link the PR here though.[/quote]

Its great actually, the only thing I disliked was the hardcore mode option that was originally proposed.

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[quote=“Lord Sunder, post:20, topic:5464”]I, for one, actually agree with the OP too. It should be an option. Hell, if you feel just that strongly about ‘savescumming’, then approach the problem from the other direction. Call it ‘safe mode’, or even ‘pansy mode’, rather than calling permadeath ‘hardcore mode’ if you’re just that strongly attached to the concept of permadeath as the only possible option. Make it an option on the debug menu, alongside the ability to give yourself NI starting points and other ridiculous stuff that I never see you complain about.

Yeesh, grognards the lot of ye.[/quote]There’s a trope for that, and I wholeheartedly agree with employing it for non-permadeath characters.

Slightly more seriously, I would definitely be better disposed towards a non-permadeath “easy” mode if it had certain everpresent reminders or signs that this is an easy mode - i.e. not the way the game is supposed to be played. For instance, have it always list the number of times you have died in the character statistics screen. Spawn motorcycles with training wheels, weapon/tool/cutlery safety manuals, various humorous jabs like that. Nothing that actually affects the gameplay, but instead serves to remind the player that he’s not experiencing the game’s challenge in full.

prepost edit: Re: sandbox game:
Cataclysm is not a sandbox game. A sandbox game and an open-world game is not the same thing. Dwarf Fortress is an open-world game. So is Cataclysm. So is Don’t Starve. “Sandbox” is reserved for “do-what-you-want” games a-la GTA, where you are free to do absolutely anything you want with no repercussions beyond a strongly worded reprimand (i.e. monetary penalty and item loss). In Cataclysm, you are only as free to do anything you want as the world allows you to, and you have to face the full consequences of your actions.

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Spawn motorcycles with training wheels, weapon/tool/cutlery safety manuals, various humorous jabs like that.

Okay, you see, that’s just being a douchebag, for the sake of being a douchebag, because I don’t want to play the game in the way that you hold sacred. Honestly, just calling it ‘easy mode’ would be enough, tbh. Training wheels? The hell is this? It’s not particularly funny, nor is it really that imaginative, and it puts additional pressure on whomever is coding the savegame addition.

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This one is implemented too. It is called Delete world after your character die… or something.

I am playing with it, because it does not make sense to start another character in the same world, few seasons later… I mean, what he was doing all the time in emergency bunker?

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If I’m not mistaken, the current plan is to actually move the save files to a “graveyard” instead of deleting them. So we technically are already doing this, but so help me, if you complain about copying/pasting files, I will find you and glue cat pictures to your house.

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Wait, really? Are you sure you’re not talking about the option to delete the world itself when your character dies?

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Wait, really? Are you sure you’re not talking about the option to delete the world itself when your character dies?[/quote]
That’s exactly what he’s talking about.

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Wait, really? Are you sure you’re not talking about the option to delete the world itself when your character dies?[/quote]
That’s exactly what he’s talking about.[/quote]

Indeed. Well, I never checked, but… it IS your ultimate delete character save and all his possessions, right?

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I’m usually one of the people showing up in threads and saying things like “well it’d make it easier for more people to get into the game” “wider audience” & “lets not offend people if we don’t have to”, etc. I’m also weirdly sucked into threads debating the style of the game (the: is Cata an ‘X’ or a ‘Y’ discussions, i.e. is it a roguelike or a sandbox?).

This thread though, stuff like this bugs me.

  • It flies in the face of the genre. Cata has always supposed to have been a rogue-like. Perma-death is a staple of the genre. Rogue-likes are supposed to have that “haha, damn, well I learned something that time I died … I’ll not make that mistake again” feeling. If you remove ANY punishment from death you’ve neutered the genre pretty badly.

I liken this type of request to popping into a FPS forum and asking they make a 3rd-person, over-the-shoulder mode for the game because some people do not like playing First Person Shooters in First Person. If they want a 3rd person shooter, they should try another title … or … maybe … just play the game as designed for what it is supposed to be. Should we add “First Person 3D Graphics” to Cata because some people don’t like top-down 2D gameplay? At some point the realization is the person complaining about that just wants to play Minecraft and not Cata, so they should just go do that or, ya’ know, play Cata as it was designed to be.

So changing a fundamental facet of the game and taking it out-of-genre for something very simple like this seems foolhardy. The game is already outrageously easy for many people, there are game features that make it so you don’t lose all your progress, and there are even work-arounds for save-scummers that pass the “mom-test” (as in, ‘could my mom accomplish this with her PC skills’) for their ease of use.

[ul][li]You can already set the world so it doesn’t implode when your character dies (I think it is toggled NOT to delete by default, even) so you can just … ya’ know … walk back to where your other character died and claim their base/vehicle/possessions(they don’t vanish when you die, you leave a corpse and pile of gear)/etc for yourself and pretend nothing bad happened if you so wish it.[/li]
[li]Turn autosave on. Then you can super easily just click and drag your save folder to a new location, or even easier, just click the save folder and rename it, then your next save will make a new folder alongside your backups. I do the folder-rename-trick currently as I play bug test, so I can go back to moments before I seriously broke the game and see if the issue is repeatable. It’d easily work for save-scummers.**[/li]
[li]There is already a large number of people who “gift” themselves large amounts of character points at start to make their games even easier and insta-create characters with a lot more skill points. You could VERY easily just recreate the character that just died. Did it have 3 melee skill and 4 firearms? BOOM, your brand new character does now … look you can even name it the same as the dead person … it is like you never died.[/li][/ul]

[size=8pt]**Plus, if someone cannot frankly figure out how to cut&paste or rename a save folder in a game, I doubt they even found their way here to give Cata a try. If they did, then consider learning how to cut&paste and/or rename a folder a free remedial computing lesson.[/size]

… and I guess I should just throw this here: There is nothing wrong with making a mod that does it, then using it. That is what mods are for.

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It’s a rougelike, not meant for filthy casuals.

I find your lack of RL spirit disappointing.

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Oh yeah, and if we ever do decide to open up to a more wider audience, how will we do it? Most regular gamers have never heard of ACSII or rouge likes in general.

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Not too happy about the direction this is taken either. Options are great, but as Dominae pointed out, not when they are going against the corner stone of the game itself. Its like implementing an option in an RPG that removes stats or an option in a FPS that disables weapons.

CIBs implementation is fine, but please, don’t move it away from the debug-zone (cheats). It would go against the whole spirit of the game.

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Tell me again about how the wider audience that Dwarf fortress misses out on. That game makes 5-10 thousand A MONTH from donations and is in the New York Museum of modern art.
Without wanting to sound rude, your premise that perma-death is off-putting to the majority of people is flawed, and without it the game would be near pointless. More to the point, pretty much the ONLY source of re-playability (and why RLs have much more of that than other games) is the permadeath aspect (no multiplayer, no story/alternate endings) - without it, you’d be able to see and do everything in a couple of hours after which the game would be pretty pointless.

However, increasing early game fun and stamping out unfair deaths (‘you fall down the stairs and die’ type unfairness) are noble goals and ones we should encourage, as well as cutting down on the time consuming tasks. One idea on the boards recently has been to have constructing multiple tile buildings (like a wall) much easier through designation. This kind of thing gets rid of the admittedly.

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I actually have no issues with it. Make an option that disables the save on death, and other features. Make the default state permadeath. Not everybody is as hardcore as ‘normal’ roguelike players (I’m going to summon horrible creatures around anybody who misspells it as rouge. Expect bad karma to happen to you if you do).

However, due to the way the world map works, quick saving and loading with different characters the same map could run into problems. So wondering how that would go. Apparantly no problems as CIB already made a pr for it.

Personally I like permadeath a lot. But I get it isn’t everybodies thing.

@Binky: Re DF. Loads of people don’t like the harsh difficulty of DF, nor the lack of proper interface etc. Sure it is a great game, but permadeath might not be the reason for it. It might be popular despite the permadeath mode. (And comparing permadeath of dwarfsims vs permadeath of a SP game isn’t totally fair).

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There actually is already a way to exit the game without saving. Look at the upper left or right corner of the game window(depending on your system). In the far corner there should be an ‘X’ which turns red when moused over. Click it, and the game will now close without saving.

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Something like this would pretty much defeat the purpose of the game. I don’t like the term permadeath, something about it sounds wrong.

I prefer saying my character has died. No need to put permanently in front of it. Death is defined as the end. I’m not going to define end.

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Roguelike.

1 life.

Fun is in discovering, dying, etc.

If you don’t like that, savescum.

Nuff said.

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Since John Candlebury invoked the design doc, I’ll just remind everyone that though “death is permanent” is the official stance, right after that we also state that we expend zero effort in enforcing it. There’s a save-on-death and that’s it. We could put in version-detection code as seen in NetHack, impose mandatory autosaving during play, any number of things.

Kevin’s commented repeatedly that we would like to move the last-alive save of killed chars to a “graveyard” folder rather than deleting 'em. (This would obviously require removing the save-on-death.) I’m in favor. It just hasn’t happened yet.

In the absence of an official repository for killed-chars, from which you can rez them should you see fit, I invite you to copy your save folders, close your windows terminal, do whatever you like. It’s your character in a single-player game. So long as you’re not (somehow) hurting anyone by playing it, we don’t care how you play.