Triffid, Blobs, and Fungaloid Expansion

[halberdsturgeon]

Arguing that there’s nothing interesting for base builders now and that therefore no time or effort should be invested in developing content for base builders strikes me as a wrongheaded approach.

That’s funny - to me, it seems completely logical to first put essential things in the game to justify the establishment of bases, and then add further content. I think it’s a terrible expenditure of time and effort to put features into the game whose relevance hinges on systems that are yet undeveloped.

[Adrian]

IIRC it’s already planned to make the Fungus and Triffids expand.
I believe the rationale for it was that the Blob specializes at altering animals, the Triffids plant life and the Fungus at terraforming.

[Goombah]

[quote=“Goombah, post:20, topic:5720”]Arguing that there’s nothing interesting for base builders now and that therefore no time or effort should be invested in developing content for base builders strikes me as a wrongheaded approach.

That’s funny - to me, it seems completely logical to first put essential things in the game to justify the establishment of bases, and then add further content. I think it’s a terrible expenditure of time and effort to put features into the game whose relevance hinges on systems that are yet undeveloped.[/quote]

You seem to be thinking that this idea is for immediate inclusion. It’s not. It’s a blueprint. A design document. An idea. One that will no doubt be modified over time and adjusted. More than that, it’s just one idea. Yes, clearly, there is a lot to be done to get there, but I hardly think anyone should pooh-pooh a speculative endeavour about possibilities just because the current game as is doesn’t support them. It’s speculative ideas that provide a destination in the first place.

It’s an end goal in line with the game’s design document. That doesn’t mean it’s up for immediate inclusion or work. I mean, hell, the entire subject of the board /includes/ ‘future plans’.

Your viewpoint seems to be rooted in the game ‘as is’, and pretending that this was put in on top of that. I don’t even think the original writer would state that’s a good idea.

Are there more important and immediate concerns? Absolutely.

[halberdsturgeon]

-snip-

You’re putting a great many words in the OP’s mouth. The OP stated that survival in the wilderness is too easy, and therefore triffids et al should be beefed up. Nothing more. What am I supposed to think if not that this is a proposal for immediate inclusion? My point is that in its current state, most of the effort that would go into these changes would be wasted, as there’s little in game reason to fight any of these monsters to begin with.

My primary concern for the game is that it’s in desperate need of a focus on essential systems to make late game play more challenging and complex than ‘run around bulldozing everything you see because I don’t know’. My posts reflect that. Take it for what you will.

[Goombah]

And you’re ignoring what he actually said on the first page about what could be versus what is. That’s what I take from it.

Where I /do/ agree with you is that they could use more tools to try to channel the community’s efforts to help into favored directions. The needful things thread was a good step in that direction, imo. This is a whole other discussion, though, and really, people are always going to gravitate to what they find most interesting, even if it seems out of order.

[i2amroy]

There is a fair bit of prior, non-implemented lore we’ve already been kicking around for a while. I highly suggest reading it, since even if it is fairly old it’s still a good approximation of how we might be looking to move forwards.

That said we do definitely want to give fungus/triffids/blob the ability to eventually expand, taking over nearby areas as they do so. The player should also be able to eventually push this infestation back, destroying the fungalized or otherwise taken over area and reclaiming it for humanity.

[kevin.granade]

I really like these suggestions at a conceptual level, nice differentiation with triffids having “runners” and fungi sending out “spores”, and blobs. These are the new front-runners for how this mechanic will work.

At a level of “should stuff spread and be a threat?”, that question has been long settled, this is the kind of behavior we want out of the various monster types, encroaching on the less dangerous areas of the map and making them more hostile.
I don’t really understand a lot of the objections I’m seeing, in particular several people seem to be claiming that this impacts a playstyle they do NOT use, and therefore shouldn’t be included, if you don’t play that way, what’s the problem?
Also there’s, "A feature in the game that asks players to put their characters at risk for no reward is quite pointless, yes."
This is simply wrong, it’s a fundamental design point of cataclysm that monsters are not loot pinatas by default, they instead are simply threats to be dealt with. It would break the game to have a large amount of reward with no risk, but having high risk with no reward is just fine. If there’s nothing you want out of a triffid grove, maybe the correct response IS to pack up and avoid it, but that doesn’t mean it’s meaningless to have it there in the first place, the very fact that you would pack up and move means it isn’t meaningless. The only way it would be meaningless is if you could ignore it completely.
The general gist of the suggestion also isn’t to make these enemies more dangerous (though that might happen too), but to make them more prevalent. We DO have a problem right now where large areas of the map are relatively safe, there’s nearly no reason to build defenses of any kind, the world just isn’t all that hostile outside of certain areas.

[halberdsturgeon]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:27, topic:5720”]Also there’s, "A feature in the game that asks players to put their characters at risk for no reward is quite pointless, yes."
This is simply wrong, it’s a fundamental design point of cataclysm that monsters are not loot pinatas by default, they instead are simply threats to be dealt with. It would break the game to have a large amount of reward with no risk, but having high risk with no reward is just fine. If there’s nothing you want out of a triffid grove, maybe the correct response IS to pack up and avoid it, but that doesn’t mean it’s meaningless to have it there in the first place, the very fact that you would pack up and move means it isn’t meaningless. The only way it would be meaningless is if you could ignore it completely.
The general gist of the suggestion also isn’t to make these enemies more dangerous (though that might happen too), but to make them more prevalent. We DO have a problem right now where large areas of the map are relatively safe, there’s nearly no reason to build defenses of any kind, the world just isn’t all that hostile outside of certain areas.[/quote]

Putting aside the fact that zombies in Cataclysm are loot pinatas in the biggest way imaginable, it is not ‘just fine’ to have a high risk with no reward. It’s content that will be ignored by everybody who plays the game aside from those that have reached the point where they have literally nothing to do but put their character at risk for the hell of it.

And I’m not just talking about loot, as far as rewards go. My comment about artifacts was tongue-in-cheek. The reward might be protecting your territory, protecting a faction’s territory, whatever - but these incentives don’t exist in the game. There are no factions, and the game fails to incentivise anchoring your character to an area and digging in, because you know ahead of time that you’ll ultimately have a choice of staying in a sterile area with nothing of interest or abandoning your base and going elsewhere (or stopping your game).

Triffids etc were put in the game by Whales for players who’d done everything else to throw their characters at for no reason other than the challenge of it. That’s bad game design, and it’s why they do nothing at present but provide an obnoxious spawn zone that players generally just walk away from. These things need a reason to exist.

[Blaze]

Wasn’t aware that there was official lore existing outside of lab computers; so that’s what I’ve been basing this on.

I’ll go ahead and take a look and see if I can alter it to fit lore.

[i2amroy]

[quote=“Blaze, post:29, topic:5720”]Wasn’t aware that there was official lore existing outside of lab computers; so that’s what I’ve been basing this on.

I’ll go ahead and take a look and see if I can alter it to fit lore.[/quote]
Since it’s not fully implemented don’t be afraid to provide alternate suggestions though! I was simply providing it as a possible potential bit of rival lore, until we actually implement something it’s fully possible to change the direction of it (or take pieces of each of them!).

[Blaze]

Okay, so looking at the lore I see it doesn’t include anything about blobs at all.

Can someone clear whether slime pits are created by XE037 or are they made by XE142/XE157 that were mentioned in the lab notes?

[Goombah]

My own thought was to give Triffids a vein and artery structure, so to speak, to go with the Groves having a heart. You’d have a central triffid heart in the area, in a central grove, and it’d spread out correspondingly, with ‘mini-groves’ attached to it. Areas between two ‘mini groves’ and the heart would be ‘triffid controlled’ territory. Triffids establish one bit at a time, but would be hard to ‘root out’. Each established mini grove feeds and strengthens the heart. When Z levels are properly in you could, say, make it so the player can dig beneath the earth and disrupt the connections between the groves to weaken them.

For Fungal spires, I say you could have a spire expand up to a certain radius around it, then it’d establish additional spires so that, when they achieve their ‘max radius’ they link up their sections. You could say ‘once every X days, a funal spire will be able to generate a new fungal seed which is carried by fungal minions to be planted in Z location’.

[kevin.granade]

Putting aside the fact that zombies in Cataclysm are loot pinatas in the biggest way imaginable, it is not ‘just fine’ to have a high risk with no reward. It’s content that will be ignored by everybody who plays the game aside from those that have reached the point where they have literally nothing to do but put their character at risk for the hell of it.

Other than people you know, playing the game, having fun doing stuff, looking for challenges. All over the forums are requests for more challenges, but here you are (speaking for everyone of course) stating that everyone will refuse to take on new challenges if they don’t drop enough loot. Just how stuck in gaming mentality are you?

And I’m not just talking about loot, as far as rewards go. My comment about artifacts was tongue-in-cheek. The reward might be protecting your territory, protecting a faction’s territory, whatever - but these incentives don’t exist in the game. There are no factions, and the game fails to incentivise anchoring your character to an area and digging in, because you know ahead of time that you’ll ultimately have a choice of staying in a sterile area with nothing of interest or abandoning your base and going elsewhere (or stopping your game).

You keep saying that, but another of the most common requests for the past year has been to have more mobile threats that come after you, not less. There have also been quite a few people chiming in in this very thread that they do NOT play the way you say they do. If you want to play the game in the easiest way possible, feel free, but don’t assume that’s how everyone wants to play. There are many requests for enhancements to mobile play, but there are just as many requests for enhancements to stationary play, and a big part of that is supplying a player that decides to remain stationary with ongoing challenges.

Triffids etc were put in the game by Whales for players who’d done everything else to throw their characters at for no reason other than the challenge of it. That’s bad game design, and it’s why they do nothing at present but provide an obnoxious spawn zone that players generally just walk away from. These things need a reason to exist.

[citation needed] that threats and challenges without explicit rewards are “bad game design”. You can render down a game to nothing but challenges, and people will still play it, because they want to win, not just accumulate toys. Yea some people are all about the toys, or points, or coins, or what have you, and that’s fine too, but don’t assume people all want the same thing out of the game you do.

[halberdsturgeon]

There are more than a couple of voices complaining about how ridiculous zombears and other zombified wildlife have gotten, as well.

If you’re going to argue the point about something as fundamental as the idea that balancing risk against reward is an essential element of game design, then honestly I don’t think there’s any point in discussing the matter further - especially since you’ve boiled my argument down in your head to a rather trivial “needs more loot”. I don’t imagine anything will change your mind about what you do or don’t do with the game, anyway.

[StarsonLovett]

I think the addition of these updates to the triffids and stuff has its pros and cons.

PROS:

this will add much more of a challenge to surviving in the wilderness. Ive survived 6 seasons in the wilderness and got so bored by it that i commited suicide in a town. You need these challenges to keep the game interesting. Or else you will end up being OP at the very start of the game. Also you will actually have to set up a base and spend time on defenses. Also if you DONT live in the forests then if the triffids spread to the town your living in then you will be over run.

CONS: These things will be easily avoidable. I mean if the triffids and slimes spread so slowly then you could move your base 20 map tiles away and the problem will be solved.

In my opinion these updates to the triffids and slimes and stuff should NOT be added but that is just my opinion.

If there is no reward to taking these on then you can just move to a new town to avoid the spreading. And as the guy said in the first post the spreading will be very slow and might take up to 100 days. So it will be very easy to avoid the triffids and slimes and stuff.

But yeah i personally think that this idea should NOT be implemented but thats just my opinion.
Without any

[Blaze]

I said 100 days since I don’t want to crowd out the world with this stuff until the player has had a good amount of time to set up. If you saw what I wrote, I said it won’t be “ACTIVELY dangerous” within that time; not that they wouldn’t spread at all.

Besides, if you move to a new section of the map; the fungus/blob/triffids would have spread there as well due to time simulation. Just because you aren’t there doesn’t mean the world doesn’t move on.

If it’s too slow/fast add a world setting that affects how fast they spread or whether they spread at all.

Actually, there’s no need for a world setting with the new mod manager; like they have fast and slow zombie mods we could have fast and slow spread mods.

[KA101]

[quote=“Blaze, post:36, topic:5720”]I said 100 days since I don’t want to crowd out the world with this stuff until the player has had a good amount of time to set up. If you saw what I wrote, I said it won’t be “ACTIVELY dangerous” within that time; not that they wouldn’t spread at all.

Besides, if you move to a new section of the map; the fungus/blob/triffids would have spread there as well due to time simulation. Just because you aren’t there doesn’t mean the world doesn’t move on.

If it’s too slow/fast add a world setting that affects how fast they spread or whether they spread at all.

Actually, there’s no need for a world setting with the new mod manager; like they have fast and slow zombie mods we could have fast and slow spread mods.[/quote]

Default DDA-seasons are 14 days. They wouldn’t spread until almost 2 years, on that timeframe (and they’d start in Winter). Spreading is fine, but the timeframe needs some work.

[Blaze]

Let me clarify.

By “Actively dangerous” I mean they would occupy enough of the world to become a direct threat to the player. Thus, they begin spreading right from the beginning, but you should be able to avoid them without too much trouble until quite a bit of time passes.

I’ve estimated that it takes me about 31 days in-game before I become pretty much immune to everything the current game can throw at me (aside from YASDs). 50-days instead of 100 would probably work for me, but the same may not hold for other players.

[Blackopsman9999]

Ahem, Mobile fucking map tiles care not for your moving triffids.

[Dominae]

Sometimes I find the Cata forums extra maddening. Are people really arguing against having more things to do? More challenge? Etc?

It almost feels like one of the arguments is “don’t improve and give purpose to monster factions because they’re stupid and have no purpose.”

Think of it Cata a Petri dish world (spoiler tags because the image ended up pretty damn big):

Right now you can park your ‘bubble’ in the world and never move again. You can do whatever you choose forever, and never die, in your walled off base you built that serves zero purpose because nothing comes to eat you (except animals, which are beyond trivial).

… OR … all those other gloops and globs in the petri-world can start slowly growing, consuming resources and converting the whole world by expanding their own ‘base zone’ a little at a time. Will they overlap yours? Will they overlap and fight it out with others? Do you get involved? Do you just hide in your base and wait to fight them off? Should you pack up and move?