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[Iceblaster]

My most successful character

Spoiler: Stats (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Armour (click to show/hide)

Why is there a ** on your crossbow o_O

I carved something into it.

In this case, it is 'My Protection' in Latin, which is 'Fidem Meam'

Shoddy Google Translate translation, but eh.

[scrdest]

My most successful character

Spoiler: Stats (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Armour (click to show/hide)

Why is there a ** on your crossbow o_O

I carved something into it.

In this case, it is 'My Protection' in Latin, which is 'Fidem Meam'

Shoddy Google Translate translation, but eh.

Pretty shoddy. The result it 'Me's (sic) faith/trust' or 'I trust mine (something)'.

'Protectione Mei' would be 'my protection'. Alternatively, 'Protector Meus', slightly different in meaning but sounds better.

I used to carve a 'This side towards zombies' on my guns.

[Gentlefish]

Man I should carve things.

Also I like the idea of carving on walls? Portal mod Ratman anyone?

[BurnedToast]

How much of an issue would it be, balance wise, to drop skills to just 1 point per 2 levels? For instance, Bionic Patient gives you hydraulic muscles, blood sensors, and metabolic interchange + 10 power for 4 points. Would an 8 in, say, archery be equal to that?

IMO, the system just needs to be reworked.

Slightly lower the starting points (-2 maybe?) then either:

(easy way) Give everyone a starting "skill" pool with like 4 - 8 points that can only be spent on skills.

or

(harder way) Remove the "no skill" professions like shower victim etc and add a whole bunch of new ones, add a spread of various low lvl skills to the free ones (seriously, how many american adults wouldn't have at least driving 1 or 2 for example?) and make the better ones have large downsides - for example hobo could have a high survival skill, a temporary advantage to make up for his temporary disadvantage (booze addiction), bionics patient could get some malfunctioning bioncs to go with his working ones (assuming malfunctioning bionics can be removed/repaired at some point), and so on.

Because you're never, ever going to be able to balance long-term permanent advantages like stats and traits with short-term bonuses to skills. Even if you got 2 for 1, it's still not worth sacrificing long-term potential to make the early game slightly easier, since you lose almost nothing if you die early on.

[Sharp]

IMO, the system just needs to be reworked.

Slightly lower the starting points (-2 maybe?) then either:

You can do that yourself quite easily, thats in the options, give yourself a few starting points or loads, totally up to you.

[i2amroy]

Because you're never, ever going to be able to balance long-term permanent advantages like stats and traits with short-term bonuses to skills. Even if you got 2 for 1, it's still not worth sacrificing long-term potential to make the early game slightly easier, since you lose almost nothing if you die early on.

Long-term advantages are only useful if you can survive long enough to use them; for many who are having problems surviving the first couple of days an easy way to get a boost is by taking a profession. Also once we get a system where people can increase their skills skill points become a less valuable thing, while a tool quality system will make having a good wood axe or other tool be worth much more. I do agree that the bionic skills could use a little rebalancing, but that's mostly because bionics are so powerful that most professions that would use them would be hell-a expensive.

That said there is an eventual goal to not so much limit the traits/professions that players have, but rather to have an obvious marker that states what "difficulty" you are playing at depending on what you have selected for your load out.

[i2amroy]

It would be more like you pick the traits/profession that you want to play with, and at the top the game will have a big "NORMAL"/EASY/HARD that changes as you assign/remove traits. So it won't limit what you can take, rather it will let you take what you want and then tell you what "difficulty" those selections put you at. (Might even throw in a "MIN/MAXER" difficulty for those who take a large number of positive traits and then a large number of negative to keep their "difficulty" setting high ).

[Darkmere]

It would be more like you pick the traits/profession that you want to play with, and at the top the game will have a big "NORMAL"/EASY/HARD that changes as you assign/remove traits. So it won't limit what you can take, rather it will let you take what you want and then tell you what "difficulty" those selections put you at. (Might even throw in a "MIN/MAXER" difficulty for those who take a large number of positive traits and then a large number of negative to keep their "difficulty" setting high ).

Honestly, that just sounds like it'll entirely segregate players in terms of difficulty. You'll have some people taking max stats and every positive trait out there, others taking just enough to creep in under normal (or hard), others taking none at all. For one thing, it'd make discussion of strategies a little more confusing, but for another it makes it hard to relate to another players' experience. When they're bragging about beating a Jabberwock on Day 1 with just a rock, is it because they had some amazing luck, or just godly stats and traits?

I hope if that system's implemented, it at least comes with some reasonable defaults so that there's some common ground for players to use.

How is all that any different from now? You can cheat up as much as you want with thousands of character points, vs.... the same thing with a single label put on it?

[i2amroy]

The "normal" difficulty most likely won't change, and will probably remain approximately what it is right now (albeit a bit broader). The big thing is that, as has been pointed out, it's already possible to change the amount of points you start with and though it takes little work it is a remarkably small amount. The new system will replace this tiny amount of work required with a system that expresses "disapproval" (or approval) as you change your load out farther from the norm. This makes it easier for those who want to play with different load outs (as well as allowing us to remove the trait point limit completely) while still maintaining the majority of comparability for other players.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   Just a quick word on difficulty, defaults, and debug. As it is currently the ability to change your starting points is in the debug section of the options menu. The given default is technically the only thing you have access to if you don't want to use "dev cheats" to get more. This basically means that while any talk of being able to just change your starting points is moot. Its like if you noted it is really easy to get Diamonds in minecraft if you make a flatworld where all the layers are diamond blocks. Now I do think a harder and maybe easier difficulty mode may be needed but honestly the points you spend won't necessarily affect how easy the start of the game is. I did a whole lot of videos where the only thing I spent my points on was a profession to see how they balanced (backpacker sucks) when it came to points. This means I did a game where I spent no points at all and it was a really good game. If you want to change the difficulty then maybe more options to change the starting areas conditions like making it so all those spawns of dead bodies instead of having corpses have zombies in their place. Also if you can jigger the game so that the town closest to the starting shelter doesn't have any specials that would make the game a lot easier without doing anything to the points total.

[i2amroy]

This isn't by any means intended to be a overall "difficulty" setting (that will most likely be elsewhere, and will factor into this). This is more of a "how tough of a time will you have" indicator.

[Grendus]

Might be an interesting difficulty setting or mode where all zombies are normal zombies and over time they "mutate" into stronger zombies.

Edit: Some sick person put landmines in a liquor store. I'm fine, but there's gore all over the bottles of happiness.

Was there a change in how addiction is handled? I'm getting alcohol cravings before I'm even sober now, it's making me a little worried. I'm not going to run out any time soon (I have plenty of cheap wine, even if I run out of the good stuff which won't happen for a while), but I worry about being able to even carry enough for a good scavenging trip.

[azmodean]

Hrm, the discussion just made me think of something, maybe we can track how "good" the PC is at surviving AND how tough the world is based on what mods are selected, classic zombies vs, city sizes vs spawn multiplier vs future weapons on/off, etc.  Not sure how the details would pan out, just a thought.

Tiruin, Silleh Boy regarding garage door paralysis.  Silleh Boy's theory is correct, the gate type doors paralyze the player for several turns while they're opening.  This is intended to represent the player pulling on a chain lift or block and tackle to open the gate.  It should probably be made into a "long action", which means you can be interrupted if you're being attacked.

Grendus: The school collapsing is not intended, I'm wondering if the zombie kids are piling up and smashing something that's triggering a roof collapse, used to not be possible, but monster pile ons might be making it happen now.  Also if the school catches on fire it'll start coming down, but that's pretty hard to miss.

Might be an interesting difficulty setting or mode where all zombies are normal zombies and over time they "mutate" into stronger zombies.

Hah! this is intended to be the default.  Great minds and all that.

[n9103]

Just an idea for the difficulty discussion:
Instead of putting labels, use a difficulty percentage number directly. (Obv. this implies that different places to spend points need different values they add/subtract from the difficulty value.)
Making it more transparent would let people know how closely their experiences may or may not differ.

Of course there are unusual cases that the min/maxer will find, but that's their issue, (different altogether from representing difficulty,) and it would quickly show itself after a few posts.

[Fniff]

Has monster infighting been added? I saw a wolf kill another wolf.

Also, cleaning windows causes the game to crash.