I'm enjoying your diary. I used to be really invested in this game but I sorta changed perspective, when I realized that so much of the gameplay is unrelated to uh the zombie survival experience. instead you find yourself investing energy in the bureaucratic management of thousands of small but useful items, transporting them, sorting them, rating them, turning them into parts.
At first it seems enjoyable, a sort of excess of realistic interactions - what other game lets you disassemble just about EVERYTHING? and build so many nerdy, boy-scout style survival gadgets from the resulting components? and also USE those gadgets to get more items to build more gadgets to...
but then you see the issue. the overwhelming nature of this simulation works against the gameplay, since it creates a feedback loops with unintended consequences:
1. the time investment from item management disencourages dramatic changes in setting. 'the survivors moved to a new house, bringing items in a wheelbarrow' is a short sentence in a novel, yet in C:DDA you might take up the better part of an afternoon doing the same. is this pleasurable?
2. the gameplay is about survival . . but if you are smart, this survival remains easy to affect. the gameplay as 'game' is fairly simple, uninteresting, repetitive. See Caves of Qud for a good example of the opposite.... Instead, C:DDA for the experienced player becomes an exercise in the aesthetics of survival, aka roleplay, aka it fails in being a true 'simulation' since you end up playing it like a storytelling game regardless. This would be fine, however:
3. the simulative mechanics, food consumption, disease, smell etc become horribly tedious when you realize that, much like in real life, you must repeat them EVERY day for the rest of your life. Horrible! C:DDA manages to recreate that awful existential feeling , that drive towards death, that lingers over the human experience.
4. so in this sense, it is a game for perfect masochists , and that's OK, but just know what you are getting into
a novel written in the style of C:DDA would describe every action by every character without filter or edit. Just pages and pages of, "Sandy took another step forward. And another. And another. Then, Sandy took a breath. Sandy took another step forward."
This is why I enjoy your journal so much - I can forget about all that bs and just enjoy the resulting story.
Thank you! That made my day. ^_^ You're absolutely right about the game kinda dragging on, though. That's why I feel it's important to mix it up, try new characters, different strategies, etc. I think "peak Cataclysm" is a semi-nomadic existence out of an RV, taking a vehicle around the map looting and pillaging, upgrading it with spare parts, acquiring new followers and repeating the process. Oh, yeah; having NPCs around is really good, 'cause you can have them automate a lot of your menial tasks like cooking and crafting. In the latest experimental, I hear they can even craft without needing zone commands, but I'm not playing on that one. If I die on this run, I may switch to it, but we'll see!
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I awaken to a big fat freaking problem. My character's caught the flu. Also known as "the Influenza." ...Eeyup. Diseases are a thing in this game. The cold, a flu, stomach bugs, that sort of thing. You can typically avoid these by wearing something to cover your mouth, as diseases work by having the game "attack" your mouth coverage/protection rating, and if it passes, you get sick like me. This is bad, but I'll first show you the sheet.
I take a
massive -4 hit to my Strength, which, thanks to Stats through Skills/Kills is at 11 so I just end up with 7, but that's really bad. It reduces all my stats, and that's not all. Influenza makes my character have coughing fits, and coughing during sleep wakes me up, so it's hard to get any actual rest that eliminates the "Tired" status. I also throw up intermittently, which makes it hard to stay hydrated and fed—especially bad for a high metabolism character, though I guess I can metabolize food a little faster before I void it. The "tired" thing is the worst part of this. If I don't get proper rest, I'll become exhausted, and that's irrespective of my physical fatigue level, which measures my in-the-moment muscle exertion and breath. Lack of sleep has knock-on effects every-freaking-where. So, I need to deal with this problem ASAP.
How do you deal with the flu? Cough syrup. This suppresses the coughing fits and mitigates a lot of the stat penalties. It exists in drowsy and non-drowsy variants; the first applies several stacks of "Depressants" on you, slowing your reaction time and making you sleepy. But either will do right now. I just need to do some raiding for it. I actually did found a bottle of it from a previous raid, but it only had 2 doses, and I've already gone through those. This flu is hanging on longer than I thought. So it's time to head north, to that big town I got to the edge of before. I'm bringing my cart w/ travois, a new military rucksack I scavenged off a zombie and washed to replace my backpack, my trusty knife spear, and a waterskin to stay hydrated.
This isn't going to be like before. I'm raiding during broad daylight. I can't afford to wait and risk exhaustion. But with my strength at 7, it should be enough, since I'll be stabbing at reach anyway.
Everything goes fine at first. I roll up the road, finding 5 zombie corpses lying next to a giant praying mantis;
nasty bastards, those, since their chitin is enough to stop basic zombie hits for the most part. You have to be pretty dang tanky for that.
I killed a few on my way in, sticking primarily to wrecked vehicles for cover; those are amazing with a spear, 'cause wreckage takes 4x as long to move through as normal ground.
I run into
Zapper zombies again—but also
Soldier zombies. The first won't be an issue, because while the head of my spear is metal, the wood shaft it's bolted to is not! (\^_^/) The soldier, though... those are always gonna be tough. Irrespective of the loot a soldier zombie actually carries, the game
always treats them as though they've got full body armor. Bullets aren't likely to work vs. ESAPI ballistic vests and the advanced tactical helmet. Even my spear with 26 pierce damage tends to average out at 5 vs. them. It's always worth it to kill them if you can, though, because they drop
quality loot like combat knives, entrenching tools, military packs/vests/pouches, and more.
Even when maximizing my advantages, activating Run to skirmish on flat ground and get to wrecks/shrubs/windows, it's not easy. Enemies are
EVERYWHERE in towns, and it's not just zombies;
Feral Humans are also around, and they're especially dangerous. Ferals are smart enough to open doors, path around obstacles, and some will throw weapons at you. Ferals are still actually human and have not turned full zed, but they're close enough that zombies won't aggro on them. They also use melee weapons, and some are fricking nasty, like the
Deranged Axeman, who wields a wood axe that can send you from full health to bleeding out and need a freaking tourniquet in one hit.
Oh, and while I was looking for cough syrup, I found a
Survivor House. These are really just marked "house" like any other, but you can see they're obviously boarded up, with heavy furniture positioned to block some entrances; I had to smash my way through a dresser to get into this one because it had chairs behind it, preventing me from pushing it out of the way. Survivor houses almost
always have guns & ammo, and this one was no exception. I found 69(!!!) Birdshot shells, and a
Kel-Tec P-3AT .380 pistol with 51 rounds of JHP, Decent all around! One thing, though—survivor houses are pretty much
always trapped, so don't blindly step around; and they have a
VERY good chance of spawning Ferals.
But hey, I found my cough syrup after a while of scavenging houses! We're saved! Time to get the FRICK out of here before I get cornered. Oh, yeah; I actually
did get cornered once, in a bathroom, while looting, by 3 zombies who came around the corner and through a window. Got out of all that with a few scratches. My spear, though, only took 1 level of actual damage for all the enemies I wound up killing, which is pretty impressive! "Well-made and will withstand the punishment of combat", indeed.
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Topic: Xvareon plays C:DDA - Survival horror zombie apocalypse roguelike RPG (Take two) (Read 2120 times)