Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[DwarfStar]

Interesting points! I think a more realistic psychology would bring a lot to the game, but also be extremely difficult to simplify into something stable. You also run the risk of further obscuring central features of the game, should you further complicated the inner workings of dwarves, though with this upcoming U.I. rewrite I imagine a lot of what is presently obscured could be more easily displayed in unit menus.

I don't think realism should be a goal in itself, because there are a uncountably many ways to model reality, and the parts we encode into a game should be chosen for their effect on the gameplay, primarily. Realism is fine, but I wouldn't want to task a programmer with adding "realism" without a deep understanding of what part of reality is currently missing from the simulation from a user's perspective.

My problem is that the current stress system allow us to tell only one story of adversity: bad thing happens to dwarf, and consequently they become either comatose or violent. How about, when some super bad thing happens to a dwarf, sometimes they work even harder to prevent it happening again? Or just, some super bad thing happen to a dwarf, but they go on with their life, and are remembered as a saint for their perseverance.

[Su]

My problem is that the current stress system allow us to tell only one story of adversity: bad thing happens to dwarf, and consequently they become either comatose or violent. How about, when some super bad thing happens to a dwarf, sometimes they work even harder to prevent it happening again? Or just, some super bad thing happen to a dwarf, but they go on with their life, and are remembered as a saint for their perseverance.

we do already have values being changed as a result of emotion, but it would be nice to see something more immedately obvious as with insanity.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Thing is...are the changing values actually an alternative to insanity for stressed dwarves? My understanding is that if you throw enough bad things at a dwarf they'll inevitably go batshit eventually no matter what.

I mean it's awesome that we've gotten progress towards a more fluid and dynamic values system, but when it comes to stress my understanding is that it just delays the inevitable at best.

[Moeteru]

Value/personality changes definitely do sometimes cause dwarves to become drastically more resistant to stress.
The problem is that it's only a matter of time before something else happens to cause another change, potentially turning them back into a nervous wreck.
More often than not the personality changes don't form any kind of coherent narrative or character arc. They function more like gradual creeping insanity, inexorably pushing your dwarves towards the extremes of the personality bell curve.

[DwarfStar]

Value/personality changes definitely do sometimes cause dwarves to become drastically more resistant to stress.

That's a good point. I suppose that's the mechanism that is intended to provide at least one other story of adversity.

Maybe I just need to role-play better when dwarves go oblivious...maybe they're not mumbling to themselves, but actually picketing, waving a sign that says "No Socks, No Ore!". The gameplay result is the same.