Why Cataclysm 2?

[Paquito]

[quote=“Paquito, post:118, topic:6219”][quote=“TacticalPteridactyl, post:106, topic:6219”]I go down into a basement, and pull out a rapier

In the dozens of games I’ve started up, I’ve never gotten this once. It’s an extremely rare, lucky event, and it’s supposed to be possible to have dumb luck like this. Was your character lucky enough to spawn next to a mansion? Congrats! You’ll get better early game loot than usual. And if rapiers shouldn’t ever spawn in shelters, that’s a quick code change. It doesn’t make any sense to cite this as an overall flaw of DDA’s gameplay.[/quote]

It’s not as rare as you think, and when it happens, it TOTALLY kills things. Sure, the first time it’s pretty exciting, but it quickly gets old. I run into basements all the time that are unreasonably packed. Just yesterday I ran into one right on the outskirts of a town with 2 rifles, TONS of ammo, 2 katanas, a variety of tools, and a variety of skill/recipe books. The only things missing were storage clothing and food. I only had to kill 4 zombies to get to them, none of them specials. If the basement just had one item out of those sets, or a more reasonable set of items, it would be way less OP. That basement eliminated or severely reduced A) the need to take risks, and B) riskiness in general. First, houses are usually found on the outskirts of town, with fewer specials around, so the risks to explore them are generally minimal. Then, With all those items found in one place, there is much less need to visit gun stores, hardware stores, libraries, and mansion/museum/antique stores (wherever you get katanas or other OP melee weaponry). Next, now that you have all those items, if you want to go exploring to find all the things you might have missed, you’re set for danger. All these combine to reduce tension, which should be one of the key features of a zombie game.[/quote]

This is definitely not my experience. I’m running the latest stable. You?

Even if this is the case, the point still stands. Simple code changes like changing where items spawn and the frequency of their spawns don’t count to fundamental flaws to DDA’s design. And there still should be the chance to get lucky and land a rare item in the early game, given the way the world is supposed to function.

[vache]

Mine was from experimental, but the issue has existed as long as there have been basements. It was exacerbated a couple versions ago by making every other house have a basement.

[Pthalocy]

[quote=“John Candlebury, post:11, topic:6219”]Also dont forget to mention that he is taking Cataclysm 2 a completely route, with defined warring factions and a consolidated endgoal, which kinda conflict with open world sandbox. Which is something that he most likely wouldn’t have been allowed to do in here.

Not to mention that its possibly awkward to pass from being the creative director of your own game and having the final world on everything in your game to being just a contributor (albeit one with a big name) who ultimately has nothing but a fraction of power that he has to share with persons who may not share the ultimate vision for his game. IMO thats the biggest reason of why he didn’t join us. I can’t really blame him for that, I would also hate losing the creative freedom of my own stories.[/quote]

Watching your baby become a community project can be strange, and I think some of the supposed ‘hate’ people are coming up with is directed toward the game as if it were still his baby. And really, it is. I guess it’s just gone up for adoptions here.

Trying to work on DDA’s ‘engine’ (is it technically an engine? I do not code.) with all the content lying on top of it is like trying to grab the card you want from under that shitty four of spades in solitaire. Shit’s stuck, man.

I think it’s nice we’re gonna see two cataclysms: two very different realizations of an initial idea, that process interests me. I just hope the fanbase doesn’t split into something silly. I’ve met a lot of people through projects like this.

[youtoo]

The complaint about too many good item spawns making the game easy is stupid. You are not required to take the items.

Anyone who says the game is too easy is encouraged to get the experimental and try these settings…

Increase zombie spawns…4x is fun
Zombie hordes
Fast zombie mod.

Surrounded start is impossible with 4x zombies. Then as you get stronger … Up the zombie spawns and go to new areas…

[RAM]

Ehhh, telling folk to ignore game events is tricky. Ignoring an item because it came too early is, in some ways, similar to save-scumming and ignoring a death because you didn’t feel that it was justified. Perhaps you didn’t know the creature existed, perhaps it was a case of wrong-button-pressed, perhaps your survivor is just too awesome to have died… Whatever the case, it is a self-imposed thing and not really directly part of the game. As a surviving the cataclysm simulation it is doing pretty poorly if the survivors ignore good equipment because they wanted a challenge, their friends are trying to eat them, for most people that would be enough of a challenge… Of course, you do need to ignore things in a development-version of a game, if everything were perfect then there wouldn’t be much left to develop.
Perhaps it is better to think of it as a way to skip a level. You find a great item, you skip the ‘killing zombies’ stage of the game and proceed to hunting down nests or building a fort in the hills or something. If rapier-level content doesn’t exist, then perhaps the problem is that late-game boons exist but late-game banes are absent. You were, in all likelihood, going to become proficient at killing zombies sooner or later regardless. In a game with permanent death, being able to skip parts of the early-game with some characters seems like a good thing as it evade some amount of repetition. If the only part f the game that you really like is looting houses, then, as long as events on other z-levels do not occur, you should probably completely ignore basements as they are not currently implemented to interact with the rest of the settlement. Is there an easy way to disable basements?

[Paquito]

Is there an easy way to disable basements?

No please. It’d be much more sensible to make stuff like certain basement-types more rare. That said, I’m still not convinced that “katana spawning basements” are at all common.

I’ve seen plenty of gun-nut basements with lots of guns and ammo. If that’s what people are talking about here, I assume it wouldn’t be hard to make those spawns much more rare, and also limit what appears in them.

I’d also worry about making the learning curve way to steep for completely new players. If you’ve been playing a game like this for a long while, it’s sort of a given that you’re going to breeze by the early game. That’s part of the reason there are game options to increase the difficulty.

[RAM]

It occurs to me that basements may often be the sort of thing that has some measure of security. Like, maybe enough to keep a tornado from getting in too easily… Speaking of, what are the odds of getting whirlwinds into the game?

[vache]

I had a thought earlier about how twisted it would be if basements had 2 zombies, 2 child zombies, and a zombie dog in the basement. Morbid, right?

[kevin.granade]

I had a thought earlier about how twisted it would be if basements had 2 zombies, 2 child zombies, and a zombie dog in the basement. Morbid, right?

I’ll take your zombie family and raise you 5 shell casings and an empty revolver.

[Anoahmous]

[quote=“vache, post:128, topic:6219”]I had a thought earlier about how twisted it would be if basements had 2 zombies, 2 child zombies, and a zombie dog in the basement. Morbid, right?

I’ll take your zombie family and raise you 5 shell casings and an empty revolver.[/quote]

I think a revolver with 1 shot left would:
A) make more sense
B) bother me more

It’d almost be like they were waiting for you to join their family.

:oooospooky:

[Pthalocy]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:129, topic:6219”][quote=“vache, post:128, topic:6219”]I had a thought earlier about how twisted it would be if basements had 2 zombies, 2 child zombies, and a zombie dog in the basement. Morbid, right?

I’ll take your zombie family and raise you 5 shell casings and an empty revolver.[/quote]

I think a revolver with 1 shot left would:
A) make more sense
B) bother me more

It’d almost be like they were waiting for you to join their family.

:oooospooky:[/quote]

Okay I gotta +1 that, and then it’s have a full six bullets, used or unused. Plus being toospooky for me.

[RAM]

Getting into scripted event territory here, is that a desired thing?

[Khrysanth]

An event is, to my mind, “something that is happening.” The event version would be you witnessing the murder/suicide.

What was described is really nothing more than “setting.” Same as coming across a school or park full of zombie children, or a wrecked vehicle embedded in a building, it is ultimately up to your own mind to interpret what you see.

[kevin.granade]

Yea, call it settings or a tableau, and yes we could use more scattered around.
The gang fights, scientists, and military last stands are versions of this.

[Rad]

Fixed requirements irritate me. Perhaps skill-intensive items could have penalties that would be disproportionately negated by skills and physiology up to a certain threshold? Say perhaps that someone with 6 strength would suffer an effective 30 recoil from a 20 recoil pistol, but if their strength or handguns reached ten, then it would be back down to 20. Rifles might have a minimum dispersion based upon skill, Bows might have range limits, light melee weapons could have severe penalties to blocking while heavy weapons might be very slow…

I agree with this. I would like to see something like Demon’s Souls (I haven’t played either Dark Souls), where you can still use it, but it is far less effective.

[Bonevomit]

I was busy with some junk so I’m responding late, sorry.

Making an apparently trolling post in a thread with a lot of arguments happening, it's only prudent to clearly state that you're joking if that's what you're doing.

Right, and he was smart to be careful. But he shouldn't have to be.

More victim blaming, great. The statement is that anonymous trolling will not be tolerated, as in if you do it, I'll just ban you immediately and delete your posts. It's not escalation, it's removing air from a fire. If trolls don't get the reactions they want, it robs them of their reward for trolling.

If this guy was a troll, he bypassed a ban by using a sockpuppet account and he got the reactions he wanted. You aren't around 24/7, and this forum shouldn't exist in a bubble. I don't consider people who get into arguments on the internet victims of anything, it's their choice. By playing them up as victims, they don't learn how to take care of themselves, and when trolls come back we become the butt of their jokes again.

The misunderstanding might be in the very first statement, I'm not seeing a "national emergency" here. One person makes inflamatory statements, other people are peeved about it, so what? Is anyone calling for a boycott of C2? Gathering together a mob to go after whales? Posting nasty comments on his tumblr or whatever he uses? Where's the fire? what exactly is it about people stating their opinions like this that's a problem?

"peeved about it" is an understatement. For me it's a problem before it gets to the point of mob justice. Those statements don't have to be inflammatory if you don't want them to be. Are these people doing anyone any good by responding to critics like this? No one is insulting them, why get so upset?

What the hell does that have to do with anything? You are aware that the norm with games is that fans can talk to the PR department of the company making the game, if that, and that readier contact and more responsive reaction to fanbase issues is appreciated, in what way is showing appreciation for that "brown-nosing"?

It's not appreciation, it's flattery. Excessive praise can leave people assuming it's granted, which isn't always the case. When someone presents tough criticism, it might appear out of line because it's not the norm. That's why it's a concern of mine.

"I don't known what the situation is, so I'm going to blame the victim" Classy.

The victims are the people who want to avoid drama. Just because someone picks a fight and it ends up being with a troll doesn't make them a victim. What if it wasn't a troll? You never know, you might be calling someone a victim when it's just a fight between two passionate individuals. A person should keep their temper under control even when trolls aren't around. It's the best thing for everyone.

More victim blaming, great. The statement is that anonymous trolling will not be tolerated, as in if you do it, I'll just ban you immediately and delete your posts. It's not escalation, it's removing air from a fire. If trolls don't get the reactions they want, it robs them of their reward for trolling

Was the last guy even a troll or just a pissed off dude with a proxy? It bothers me that people are so quick to say "troll". It could be a troll, it could not. If he was a troll he posted strong criticism to laugh at how angry we get, if he was not, he posted strong criticism because he genuinely believed it to be true. But that doesn't change what is the more dignified way to respond to him. I think trolls teach us an important lesson that way.

Moderation so stringent shouldn’t be a necessity, and a lot of people will say it is because our userbase will never learn. I don’t believe that, they just have too many bad examples and not enough good ones. To some degree new people will conform, for better or worse.

[kevin.granade]

I’m not going to reply point by point. We’ve established that your “national emergency” thing was hyperbole. When pressed you keep either deflecting or moving the goalposts. Whatever, that’s debunked.
So your point is basically that if you provoke people they’ll get upset. And I guess that other more civilized people on the internet don’t feed trolls.
I want to come to your internet, because that’s not how it works literally every place I’ve spent time.

The places that work better do so by having ubiquitous silencing mechanisms in place such that abusive posts are hidden from the vast majority of users. Unfortunately we’re on stone-age forum technology here, and have no such measures, so if someone feels like being a disruptive jerk, they can, and it tends to engage the community.

Do you have a suggestion other than everyone on the forums suddenly changing their behavior?

[Bonevomit]

Of course it’s a hyperbole. It’s a metaphor, it’s not like they see the criticism, board up their windows and start hoarding soup cans. But that’s just semantics, so it’s no big deal. It would appear as though I can’t convince you that their responses are unnecessarily defensive though, which is unfortunate.

Do you have a suggestion other than everyone on the forums suddenly changing their behavior?

Yes, everyone on the forums should gradually change their behavior. Patience is the key word here, you dig?

Rome wasn’t built in a day Kevin, it won’t be easy but we will get there some day. You’re skeptical, that’s fine, but I think I can prove you wrong. Luckily we don’t have a forum with “ubiquitous silencing mechanisms”, that’s pretty drastic and cold. I wouldn’t want to be part of a forum with “ubiquitous silencing mechanisms”, that’s some Orwellian shit right there. This isn’t some secret government agency type stuff, we’re all just here to have fun really, the atmosphere shouldn’t be one of oppression, but one of good times and easy-goingness.

And you are very welcome to my internet Kevin.
Just be chill and lower your defenses, and you too can come to bonevomits internet, where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came. Where the trolls don’t bite, and your users don’t fight. Where what you call the disruptive jerks, are just another one of the perks. Where the only silencing mechanisms we need are our minds, and they don’t delete every unpleasant criticism that they finds.

And it’s not like taking my advice would make anything any worse. Let’s say the forum was less sensitive to criticism and we could all get along? Your moderation duties would be that much easier. So why not support a change in that direction? The way I see it, you have nothing to lose.

[Paquito]

Bonevomit is awfully sensitive to criticism about his own opinions here. The irony is pretty delicious.

[Slax]

SO ABOUT CATACLYSM 2…
No updates on git for a while. So sad.