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zedprime posted:The (original) Xcom method of gun firing is so venerable as to be derived from the actual literal grognard standard for dispersal. It can be bullet science if you want it, and in simulation engines like ARMA or whatever should be more complicated since there is an aspect of animating out the bullet. But its turn based, you get to cheat and trace paths beforehand and poo poo. The preponderance on first principles is total sim chaff and well into the territory of funner to design and program than to play with. Ultimately, the backend doesn't matter as long as the player knows what the %chance to hit is. I'm in favor of bullets traveling further and impacting on things behind the target because the potential for shenanigans is much higher, especially with explosives.
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Sep 17, 2017 19:33
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I am very hype for CDDA to be fun again. I know from experience that goons can be a very impressive force for Big Projects. My personal recommendation would be for basically everything content-wise to be a mod/optional. Some people want less factions and more zombies, some people want more/less fine gun differences, some people want references removed... Throwing these and similar into packs or options (and I know there's a lot of them already) would be the best option, and as far as I know would require only a fraction more work. Although I could be wrong there!
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Sep 17, 2017 19:38
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Strudel Man posted:Eh, interrupt dialogue boxes kind of break up the flow of the game. It should be clear overall, but I don't know that it needs a popup like that. I honestly would like an interrupt box like that, but if it was an option to turn on or off it would be perfect.
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Sep 17, 2017 19:39
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ldragon posted:I honestly would like an interrupt box like that, but if it was an option to turn on or off it would be perfect. Yeah a toggle in options seems like the ideal compromise.
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Sep 17, 2017 23:58
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For what it's worth, here's some neat bulletpoints on my thoughts on the whole combat mechanics/design, in no particular order: *The specific underlying math - actual dispersal, RPG-style percentage-rolls, roll a virtual D6, whatever, doesn't really matter, but it should be elegant. The more complex this poo poo is, the more likely it's going to have weird interactions with something else. *In general, the more simple something, the better. If you can't explain a thing in ten words or less you should try and fix that.(Look who's talking, I know.) *Information should be presented to the player in an understandable form. Is 1.5 dispersal much worse than 1.0? What the hell does the little confidence bar mean? Why's there a toggle for holding my breath, what actual effect does that have? Am I not hitting that guy because I have lovely luck or because it's just a bad shot to take? Just give me a little popup box that says 'Chance to hit: 45%'. Even better if it tells me why (cover, movement, pain, etc.) *I feel like that when we start balancing/building things,we should start doing it around specific benchmarks. Like, say, 'Your average starting character should have about a two-in-three chance of hitting a basic zombie at range, if they're not doing something dumb.' 'Your average starter gun should probably take an average of two hits to kill a basic zombie.' This lets us easily figure out things like 'Therefore, your average zombie should be expected to take about three,four bullets to take out' and 'So if your basic starter pistol has fifteen shots in a magazine, you can polish off four or five basic zombies with a single reload'. Things that let you plan encounters and playstyles around. *Ranged vs Melee - Obviously both need to be powerful in their own right. Currently, the logic seems to be 'well you have to be close to melee so it needs to hurt more because muh hanzo steel. This leads to stupidity like a zombie taking two, three blasts of a shotgun to the face while you can one-shot a hulk with a swipe of your glorious nippon katana. How about we do it like this, instead - if you want pure DPS, go for a gun. That's what they're for. However, give melee weapons all sorts of other fun secondary side effects to compensate - baseball bats and big blunt weapon cripple your targets, cutting weapons get bleeds, whatever. Having access to easy crowd control effects and such gives you more options than 'wail on it like hell and hope he runs out of hp before you do'. *Different weapons types, whether ranged or melee, should also probably have their own niches - a gun for every situation. *Re: guns: I'm not convinced we need to track weapon durability for ranged guns. We're already tracking ammo and the whole point of both mechanics is 'limit how long a player can use the same cool thing before they need to vary tactics'. Besides, from a ~realism~ standpoint, a firearm doesn't really get actively worn down in use the same way a melee weapon would - at least if you keep any kind of care of the thing. (No, I'm not convinced we really need to simulate weapon maintenance from a player standpoint - if anything just roll it into 'a weapon degrades more slowly when you have a higher skill with it'. Let's not go for a Sword Polishing SImulator 3000.) *Monsters shouldn't probably be arbitrarily flat out immune or even resistant to a player's special tricks or abilities unless you have a really good reason to make them so. If a player wants to build their character around the idea of stunning the poo poo out of monsters, let them - don't go 'yeah that works now, but after the first two weeks everything is drat near resistant to stuns'. This isn't to say that any monster should be a pushover to every kind of a tactic; just that if a player develops a special gimmick, it should be at least viable across most of the game. Don't punish people who think out of the box by taking away their cool toys, for that is the way of the Kevinoid. *Critical hits on player characters is probably a bad idea. Critical hits or the equivalent (Headshot!) is cool and super satisfying when you pull it off and oneshot a monster, but it's it's cheap when a mook just randomly and arbitrarily does the same to you - and players, on the basis of being player characters, will end up taking so many hits that the bullshit crit eventually will pop up for them. I'd more give most monsters some sort of an interesting special attack that goes off as a 'crit' - like the zombie's infectious bite, a hulk hitting you so hard that you go flying, that sort of a thing. Things that don't necessarily hurt more, but alter the dynamics and force you to replan on the fly. *Occurs to me that we probably shouldn't keep track of every individual bullet damage-wise. Case in point, SMG turrets: I don't think they're supposed to be as powerful as they are, but the sheer weight of fire from two SMGs just forces so many damage rolls on your armor and any exposed body parts that there's no way to survive it. Unless you wear armor over a certain magical breakaway point, at which point you become magically immune to SMGs. I'm thinking of a system where a burst just does a multiplier of single shot damage and a full-auto salvo basically is an AoE attack, more on that later. *Edit: There should always be more than one way to get access to a certain beneficial effect, skill or whatever. For example, extreme temperature resistance: you need it to manage the hot/cold labs. If there's only one way to reach the temp resistance you need to survive, you've essentially just made sure every character ever must do x, period, no questions asked, do not pass go. Bionics, mutations, the appropriate clothing, lucking out with a weird artifact, there should be different approaches available to differently specialized characters. Drake_263 fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Sep 18, 2017 |
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Sep 18, 2017 00:02
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Drake_263 posted:For what it's worth, here's some neat bulletpoints on my thoughts on the whole combat mechanics/design, in no particular order: 25% chance to aim 1 square left of target 25% chance to aim 1 square right of target 25% chance it just missed, continues on trajectory 25% is either too high or too low (end bullet pathing), If there is another target in the new trajectory, a (original accuracy/2) chance to hit each target in the same line. That way players can fire into hordes full auto they can do a lot of damage. Drake_263 posted:*Ranged vs Melee - Obviously both need to be powerful in their own right. Currently, the logic seems to be 'well you have to be close to melee so it needs to hurt more because muh hanzo steel. This leads to stupidity like a zombie taking two, three blasts of a shotgun to the face while you can one-shot a hulk with a swipe of your glorious nippon katana. How about we do it like this, instead - if you want pure DPS, go for a gun. That's what they're for. However, give melee weapons all sorts of other fun secondary side effects to compensate - baseball bats and big blunt weapon cripple your targets, cutting weapons get bleeds, whatever. Having access to easy crowd control effects and such gives you more options than 'wail on it like hell and hope he runs out of hp before you do'. You could have different types of weapons have different effects (swords cut more vs clubs knockback and stun, etc), and you'd probably limit active defences to once per turn, increasing with melee skill & dependant on the weight of the weapon? That would be a lot of work though.
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Sep 18, 2017 02:37
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Dirk the Average posted:Ultimately, the backend doesn't matter as long as the player knows what the %chance to hit is. I'm in favor of bullets traveling further and impacting on things behind the target because the potential for shenanigans is much higher, especially with explosives. Yeah, this is why X-Com is still playable despite using complicated dispersal algorithms for misses - because it only uses those if the much simpler "chance to fire dead center" roll fails, and you get to see the exact % of that roll right on the UI. As a general rule, players probably don't care about the potential dispersal angle or other such details. They just want to know how likely they are to hit or not. All that stuff can be included in the background if you want it (I'm a simulationist nerd so I like when stuff is super detailed like that), but the math should be there to boil it down to a simple "Chance to hit" that you can display. Also, a helpful feature might be to trace a line on screen after the player fires that shows the actual trajectory of their fired bullet, so they can see where it went on a miss. Maybe a toggleable thing since if you fire a bunch of projectiles in one turn like with an automatic or a shotgun, it might crowd the screen. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Sep 18, 2017 |
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Sep 18, 2017 03:38
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Strudel Man posted:Eh, interrupt dialogue boxes kind of break up the flow of the game. It should be clear overall, but I don't know that it needs a popup like that. Have them show up when you hit @. Funnily enough the expanded nutrition diseases do that. You get a mild text warning in the morning about them, and if you look at your char screen you see exactly what you have. Other diseases could be the same way.
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Sep 18, 2017 06:51
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Coolguye posted:the worst of the vehicle changes in the CleverRaven mainline were eventually backed out. in the current experimental you can do pretty much whatever you want and it's fine. certain designs no longer work (like i used a 5-wide warbike setup where the front wheels were all road rollers, in the current version this makes your vehicle untenably slow) but in general it's fine. oh man I have to try this someday.
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Sep 19, 2017 12:06
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The last time I played Cataclysm was version A and starting out on the latest version seems a lot harder. I remember archery been a lot stronger once I got a longbow with heavy field arrows, but I can barely hurt, let alone kill a zombie with my longbow this version. Also, was throwing nerfed? I remember carrying around stone javelins and murdering shocker zombies at night really easily using throwing sticks and javelins. It doesn't seem to do much damage any more.
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Sep 19, 2017 18:48
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throwing is bad now but archery is still good. you just need a compound recurve or whatever the hell that one is instead of a longbow. as a result the biggest change is that you can't start with archery and expect it to work - you need to store some food and water and have a backup plan now.
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Sep 19, 2017 19:05
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I feel like another problem with C:DDA is that people are miscalibrating how much of a difficulty-hell roguelike it should be. Roguelikes are fun despite loss of progress because they are actually quite fast and not really 'grindy' (good ones, anyways). Comparatively, I think C:DDA has a lot of (real-world) time-consuming tasks that put it somewhat in conflict with the roguelike side of it. I think permadeath is fine, but you need to be reaaaaal careful about bullshit unavoidable deaths.
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Sep 19, 2017 20:28
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Yeah, I agree. Enormous grind and drudgery just doesn't work in a game that's ostensibly designed around 'you might gently caress up and die any moment, oh, and permadeath'. Got to pick one or the other.
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Sep 20, 2017 10:01
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I just use the launcher to back up my saves. Weird that you gotta use a third party workaround to make the game enjoyable but it wouldn't be the first time
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Sep 20, 2017 16:12
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Removing crits against the player would probably help. Also, to take an idea from caves of Qud, the turrets should have a blatant warning period when they lock onto a target to give you time to step back around a corner before they let loose a volley. Like a beep and a few hundred action units worth of time before firing on whatever it beeped at.
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Sep 21, 2017 06:55
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Oh wow. So just got around to playing that super new release, and let me just say, shade zombies are bullshit. How the gently caress does anyone expect for a new player to get started when this unforgiving-rear end game just throws new ways to gently caress you over. I have been playing this game on and off for years, as a casual, not interested in being a fursuited ninjitsu mutant, and this just burns my god drat biscuits. Here's my input, either weaken shade zombies or make them spawn much less. Also, add a "Shotgun Infantry" class and a rare IBM 5100 spawn. The Divergence meter's flashing 12:00 and mad cow disease is REAL Suspect Bucket fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Sep 22, 2017 |
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Sep 22, 2017 21:14
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Suspect Bucket posted:Oh wow. So just got around to playing that super new release, and let me just say, shade zombies are bullshit. How the gently caress does anyone expect for a new player to get started when this unforgiving-rear end game just throws new ways to gently caress you over. I have been playing this game on and off for years, as a casual, not interested in being a fursuited ninjitsu mutant, and this just burns my god drat biscuits. I mean, if you're going to add Titor stuff, then I think it's time to Imagine four balls on the edge of a cliff.
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Sep 22, 2017 21:35
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Fayk posted:I mean, if you're going to add Titor stuff, then I think it's time to Imagine four balls on the edge of a cliff. Equipable bulging crotch
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Sep 22, 2017 21:51
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Wait, what's so hard with shade zombies. They're kinda useless and wander around in daylight. I guess they make night raiding harder, but they aren't any stronger than a regular zombie, and most of the starting options can kill a number of those easy.
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Sep 23, 2017 01:40
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they're more aggressive at night and can bring more zombos with the noise they make getting to you, but they're pretty easy to kill with a cudgel.
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Sep 23, 2017 01:47
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Roobanguy posted:they're more aggressive at night and can bring more zombos with the noise they make getting to you, but they're pretty easy to kill with a cudgel. Yeah but when I'm just breaking in to a game start the first few nights and need to find basic food and clothes, even one zombie can be deadly. They are not fun for me. Do they get turned off with the "basic zombies only" worldgen?
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Sep 23, 2017 08:29
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i believe they do, but you are better off just making a cudgel in your first day. with a cudgel and a little tactical positioning (force them to come over something that is 'slow', like a window) you can kill approximately infinity shady zombies. SO, BY THE WAY, EVERYONE. We've been kicking around design direction in the Discord for a while now and I've distilled all the current suggestions and desires down to what I feel is a pretty coherent mission statement. I've pushed it back to 3 priorities, in order of importance. In order to keep things from being a hugely long word soup, I think these 3 priorities are about as many as we should ever have. I post them here now for constructive critique by folks.  Please note! Constructive critique does NOT mean saying "I don't like thing" or "This seems bad." If you don't like thing or think a specific element of something is bad, include your alternative in the critique, please. If you can't take the time to think about and articulate what is good then frankly you're not putting enough thought into this for anyone to listen to you. With that said! Here: 1. Make a storytelling machine Cataclysm, even as it stands, is great at telling stories. The primary goal should be to make it even better at that. Consequently, things that get in the way of telling stories (such as inventory, obtuse combat, and fiddly simulation aspects) should be removed where found and not implemented where suggested. Things that allow better stories to be told should be encouraged and prioritized. The greatest way to advocate for a feature is to talk about the stories it will enable. 2. Set the stage well Our primary responsibility in world-building is providing a good stage for players to debut on. Environments should hint at their history. Buildings should have a purpose in their community. It should be possible to tell what a place was before the end, and its status after the end should reflect that. Players should be able to make characters with flavorful traits that affect very little but help them get into the role of their story. 3. Provide Props After setting the stage, players need real ways to interact with it. It should be possible to use the environment to accomplish tasks, like breaking into a building, escaping a horde, save survivors, etc in emergent ways - and who cares if it might make a particular goal very easy in a particular situation. You should be able to bash down light poles to smash an oncoming horde, or collapse a way into a bank vault. You should be able to electrify vehicles to fry enemies (and yourself, if you're too close). You should be able to distract and deceive enemies with noise and scent. If there's no feedback requiring major changes over the weekend I'll start going over all of the documents we've generated up to this point and start populating issues for individual developers to work. Then at that point the developers who intend to work on the project will work together to gather features/issues into milestones and work can begin in earnest.
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Sep 23, 2017 08:50
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Not to go off on a tangent here but if you want to see a real nightmare you should check out the ios port someone cobbled together. It's really something.
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Sep 23, 2017 08:54
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That mission statement sounds pretty convincing, and "does this enable a good story" is a very strong litmus test you can apply to just about anything. I like it. You want to streamline the game towards making cool and fun stuff happen. "Setting the stage" reminds me that I really don't like the current character generation system, do other people feel as strongly about it as I do? In particular I don't like the fact that it encourages you to build a super strong character with high stats, some useful traits, and a ton of flaws which actually barely do anything. Also most of the backgrounds are objectively worse than a small subset of them, if you're looking at them from a purely gameplay perspective. I feel like a better system would be one where your stats are determined purely by your background and the rest of the character generation system can be balanced around that. This would allow the backgrounds to be more distinct from one another, and also prevent you from just going all in on stats like you can currently. You could even fold the scenario and background systems together entirely, which would further cut down on choices to be made during character generation, but also allow individual backgrounds to be even more distinct gameplay experiences from one another. Having a slightly more difficult starting situation shouldn't give you a huge leg up in the mid game because it gives you a ton of extra stat points. Basically I want to feel like there's a good reason to start as a cop or a firefighter or one of those other few dozen choices that sound fun but don't really mean anything other than gimping you a bit.
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Sep 23, 2017 09:28
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This isn't an argument for grinding, that can gently caress right off. But you should be careful not to streamline too much and throw the baby out with the bathwater. Dwarf Fortress is probably the greatest procedural story generator there is; because of the fiddly simulation aspects, not despite them.
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Sep 23, 2017 10:00
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Coolguye posted:1. Make a storytelling machine What type of stories are you looking for, and what do you want to enable? This will run into issues when one person creates comedic stories where someone else wants drama, where someone else wants action, etc. There needs to be some sort of tone set by the game that is coherent and consistent across descriptions; having some item descriptions or monsters be wacky while others are ultra-serious can undermine what you're trying to get across. This ties in a bit to what tooterfish is bringing up - getting rid of something like thirst eliminates a lot of the "I'm running out of water and need to quickly find more" sort of stories. Adding the zombie hordes as they are currently implemented makes the game a lot more tense in terms of making noise, but that also precludes making a Mad Maxesque deathmobile and ghost riding it into a crowd of zombies. I like this goal, and I would encourage you and the team to discuss what your vision for the types of stories you're looking for are in more detail. I'd also like to see as an action item in the far future, mods that change the story aspects. For instance, a start where the player is in the desert instead of in the northeast, would be far more focused on food and water and would be more of a tense resource gathering scenario where thirst is absolutely warranted as a mechanic, while the default start has such abundant water that it might not be helpful.
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Sep 23, 2017 15:55
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The thing about water in particular is that it's trivial to acquire in large quantities even very early in the game if you're willing to put up with some tedium, and does virtually nothing thereafter. That doesn't sound like a recipe for a good gameplay mechanic.
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Sep 23, 2017 17:48
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tooterfish posted:This isn't an argument for grinding, that can gently caress right off. But you should be careful not to streamline too much and throw the baby out with the bathwater. Dirk the Average posted:What type of stories are you looking for, and what do you want to enable? This will run into issues when one person creates comedic stories where someone else wants drama, where someone else wants action, etc. There needs to be some sort of tone set by the game that is coherent and consistent across descriptions; having some item descriptions or monsters be wacky while others are ultra-serious can undermine what you're trying to get across. Thirst and all the stupid random diseases/parasites are fine if you like what they add to the game, but for anyone who doesn't it's boring and needlessly distracting to have so much extra meaningless-annoying-poo poo-to-do that it takes a checklist to keep track of it. People complain about those mechanics because (subjectively) they generally annoying and not fun or interesting. Generally either you plan ahead and avoid them entirely, or they hit you with a stat debuff at the worst possible time and suddenly it's an unavoidable game over. But if you think those features do add some value as ~verisimilitude~ or whatever you want to call it, maybe they could be rolled into an options/mod so not everyone is forced to wear a gas mask to avoid getting the flu and always carry a grappling hook in case of sinkholes or all the other stupid bullshit that requires reading spoilers to avoid getting crippled/killed in boring and pointless ways. Dying and unexpected challenges should at least be funny or exciting. So basically: don't eliminate all of the tedious grindy poo poo, but also don't keep the buttfucked-to-death-by-the-RNG mechanics the same, as they currently force you to grind-or-die which is a boring false choice... make it a set of options, with some further optional challenges to make survival aspects even harder for the nerds who are into that kind of thing (nerf foraging, 98% of 'scrap metal' actually ends up being useless junk, etc.) Bonus points if you call it the Immersive HD Hardcore Survival Grog Mod and add a random chance of accidentally drowning when drinking, that instantly kills the player/NPC. 
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Sep 23, 2017 18:27
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silentsnack posted:Thirst and all the stupid random diseases/parasites are fine if you like what they add to the game, but for anyone who doesn't it's boring and needlessly distracting to have so much extra meaningless-annoying-poo poo-to-do that it takes a checklist to keep track of it. People complain about those mechanics because (subjectively) they generally annoying and not fun or interesting. Generally either you plan ahead and avoid them entirely, or they hit you with a stat debuff at the worst possible time and suddenly it's an unavoidable game over. The point that I'm trying to make is that thirst as a mechanic can generate stories (though, obviously, it's much more relevant to a desert start than an area of the country with an overabundance of water). If thirst doesn't generate stories in whatever scenario the game goes with, then absolutely get rid of it! For me, personally, I really enjoyed the book My Side of the Mountain growing up, and so I always enjoy setting up a camp and gathering food/water/etc. It's neat to carve out a little spot of existence and become self-sufficient. That sort of gameplay though is at odds with charging into zombies to try to resupply as the character is desperately seeking goods to keep going, which is also at odds with a game where supplies are a secondary concern and awesome zombie smashing is the primary concern. Stories are a great thing to go for, but one set of gameplay mechanisms can't cover all of the bases for different types of post-apocalyptic stories. Some things are going to have to be cut to home in on and create a focused and enjoyable experience.
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Sep 23, 2017 18:51
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Dirk the Average posted:The point that I'm trying to make is that thirst as a mechanic can generate stories (though, obviously, it's much more relevant to a desert start than an area of the country with an overabundance of water). If thirst doesn't generate stories in whatever scenario the game goes with, then absolutely get rid of it! Which is why I said make it optional: if the game/simulation is a storytelling device, let the player decide what kind of story they're telling. If they want a survival story where the world itself is an adversary that poses a real threat, they should be able to get mechanics to support that story with a survival mod. If they want to bypass all the boring survival grind to have an action/adventure/zany-comedy story, they should have the option of a mod that makes weak/silly/improvised weapons oneshot random Z enemies, and starvation/thirst isn't a serious issue but food items make for a good joke. If they want to McGuyver their way out of insane situations, buff zombies but make barricading a room and crafting non-scifi stuff almost instant and add all kinds of improv tools to make.
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Sep 23, 2017 19:06
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silentsnack posted:Which is why I said make it optional: if the game/simulation is a storytelling device, let the player decide what kind of story they're telling. We are in agreement.
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Sep 23, 2017 19:12
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Having their cake and eating it seems like what has paralyzed every fork of this game because no one ever wants to answer the hard question of if the game is supposed to be Unreal World with zombies and cars instead of deer and cabins or is supposed to be zombie ADOM.
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Sep 23, 2017 19:16
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Maximalism was never what crippled this game. If anything, its lack of coherent vision, its obsession with dubiously accurate and consistently unfun simulationism, and its hostile and controlling lead dev are what dragged it into the current quagmire. Games that try to be everything at once can be fun as hell, as long as their developers are genuinely doing their level best to pack them full of fun poo poo to do. No game is ever especially likely to be fun if "will this be/is this fun to play" isn't a question that ever gets asked during its development. Angry Diplomat fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Sep 23, 2017 |
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Sep 23, 2017 20:00
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There's nothing innately wrong with gathering water and food and firewood and such to survive - hell, look at games like Don't Starve! where the whole game cycle revolves around exactly that, and enemies are there to just slow you down - the problem is that Cataclysm I feel should innately be a gamer about Beating Zombies and Being A Badass while a small but annoyingly vocal part of the playerbase (along with a sympathetic dev) seem determined to pile up the simulationist cruft to stretch out the game by force of sheer timeswallowing tedium. zedprime posted:Having their cake and eating it seems like what has paralyzed every fork of this game because no one ever wants to answer the hard question of if the game is supposed to be Unreal World with zombies and cars instead of deer and cabins or is supposed to be zombie ADOM. A much more succinct way of saying it, thank you.
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Sep 23, 2017 20:01
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Dirk the Average posted:What type of stories are you looking for, and what do you want to enable? This will run into issues when one person creates comedic stories where someone else wants drama, where someone else wants action, etc. There needs to be some sort of tone set by the game that is coherent and consistent across descriptions; having some item descriptions or monsters be wacky while others are ultra-serious can undermine what you're trying to get across. Yeah, to be clear, there's been literally no talk of wholly eliminating large features (such as hunger, thirst, or morale), only talk about simplifying stuff. Thirst is a good mechanic as-is, in my book, though other people who have committed to work on the project can chime in. Being able to just drop a mod in and disable it would be fine imo, hell it wouldn't even be that hard. Just if a mod is around you get the sustenance mutation that restores nutrition and quench as fast as you can burn it. As far as 'what type of stories', you can look back at the stories people used to tell in this thread back when folks were discovering the game and discoverable content was being made semi-regularly. You should be able to talk about a glorious last stand or a dumb mistake that ended in you getting incinerated much more readily than you should be able to talk about making a fully working dirt-farming commune in the woods. tooterfish posted:This isn't an argument for grinding, that can gently caress right off. But you should be careful not to streamline too much and throw the baby out with the bathwater. I don't think anyone would be at all opposed to something as fiddly as mechanical breakdowns per component in your deathmobile IF it provided interesting decisions on how to build your car in the first place or made a real impact on how cars run compared to one another. If it's not going to do anything beyond add more pitfalls and make an objectively correct way to do things, we're not interested. RabidWeasel posted:The thing about water in particular is that it's trivial to acquire in large quantities even very early in the game if you're willing to put up with some tedium, and does virtually nothing thereafter. That doesn't sound like a recipe for a good gameplay mechanic. zedprime posted:Having their cake and eating it seems like what has paralyzed every fork of this game because no one ever wants to answer the hard question of if the game is supposed to be Unreal World with zombies and cars instead of deer and cabins or is supposed to be zombie ADOM.
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Sep 23, 2017 20:18
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Also, with regard to getting off quick and having dumb fun quick: One of my suggestions that went over really well in the Discord was to have a small handful of 'starter' backgrounds/builds that are a blatant cheat and generally trivialize combat in return for letting people just get up and get moving. The two that came up were kung-fu master (which would drop you in with a generally min/maxed tiger kung fu character that could just poo poo on everything) and navy seal (which would drop in with a combat knife, lots of melee skill, plenty of guns and ammo, and probably a 'trained in gorilla combat' joke in there somewhere). These of course will just be something you can press and none of the current options should go away, it's just a matter of communicating to people 'look, it's fine, just play the game the way you want and have fun, sheesh' right off the bat to get them onboarded.
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Sep 23, 2017 20:23
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Dirk the Average posted:For me, personally, I really enjoyed the book My Side of the Mountain growing up, and so I always enjoy setting up a camp and gathering food/water/etc. It's neat to carve out a little spot of existence and become self-sufficient. That sort of gameplay though is at odds with charging into zombies to try to resupply as the character is desperately seeking goods to keep going, which is also at odds with a game where supplies are a secondary concern and awesome zombie smashing is the primary concern. Same. That, and The Hatchet were pretty galvanizing in my interest in my interest outdoors and camping. Can we have a "The Hatchet With Zombies" start? It even has moose fights as cannon.
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Sep 23, 2017 20:41
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Coolguye posted:Also, with regard to getting off quick and having dumb fun quick: One of my suggestions that went over really well in the Discord was to have a small handful of 'starter' backgrounds/builds that are a blatant cheat and generally trivialize combat in return for letting people just get up and get moving. The two that came up were kung-fu master (which would drop you in with a generally min/maxed tiger kung fu character that could just poo poo on everything) and navy seal (which would drop in with a combat knife, lots of melee skill, plenty of guns and ammo, and probably a 'trained in gorilla combat' joke in there somewhere). Some intentionally 'easy mode' starts would be an excellent addition, I think, but I wouldn't like for that to be an excuse for allowing the current balance issues with character generation to be ignored (not that I'm saying that you will, just that previously people used "backgrounds aren't supposed to be balanced" as an argument for them to remain wildly unbalanced).
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Sep 23, 2017 21:00
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well personally i think backgrounds as a whole should probably go away to a large extent tbh. let them be something to allow you to have an easy mode or hard mode (like Tweaker is now - someone also suggested Diabetic at one point, where you could have an insulin addiction that never goes away and WILL kill you without you figuring out where to get your medicine), but the distinction between a survivor that starts with a winter coat and a fireman that starts with a fire axe is ultimately so pointless that you're just thumbing through seeing which one gives you an extra point to scrape away, and leads to arguments like that one. i'd rather just give someone the points and figure out a way to let them purchase starting gear instead.
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Sep 23, 2017 21:43
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Coolguye posted:i'd rather just give someone the points and figure out a way to let them purchase starting gear instead. I want one iron anvil, two copper picks, 50 purple helmets...
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Sep 23, 2017 22:47
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