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[SirAaronIII]

Can you overdose? Because I can't find any issues with swallowing a whole bottle of codine..

You can, but only with certain things, like Adderall (see NPCs blowing their own heads off) and cocaine. Maybe meth too.

[hemmingjay]

Playing now while my internet is down. Playing as a bookworm whose only goal is to survive long enough to learn everything from the books in the library.

[Whales]

G-Flex, I agree with you completely about skills, and I've been saying for a long time that they will, some day soon, be eliminated from character creation entirely.  It's simply a waste of points; better to put that 1 point into a stat, a permanent increase that's hard to obtain in-game, than into 2 points of a skill that you could get in the first day of gameplay.

At some point the Skills tab in character creation will be removed entirely and replaced with a Profession tab.  Your profession would grant a few starting skills at low levels, equipment to go with them, and perhaps a unique trait.  For instance, the Police Officer profession would start with a level in handguns, a level in speech, and a level in dodge, and would get a USP 9mm and a holster.  The Priest profession would start with priest robes, a few levels in speech, a bible, and the Man Of The Cloth trait, granting them automatic respect from religious NPCs.

Glyph is totally right about those things needing balanced, and they'll be addressed at some point soon.

[G-Flex]

At some point the Skills tab in character creation will be removed entirely and replaced with a Profession tab.  Your profession would grant a few starting skills at low levels, equipment to go with them, and perhaps a unique trait.  For instance, the Police Officer profession would start with a level in handguns, a level in speech, and a level in dodge, and would get a USP 9mm and a holster.  The Priest profession would start with priest robes, a few levels in speech, a bible, and the Man Of The Cloth trait, granting them automatic respect from religious NPCs.

Interesting, although would it make more sense to make that modular? I'm wondering if there's really a benefit to having the player select a "profession" rather than select the aspects of a profession individually. By clumping them into categories like that, you limit player flexibility, so you want to make sure there's a significant benefit to doing it that way as opposed to just letting the players select those skills, items and traits directly. I'm not saying there aren't ever benefits to doing it the way you're saying, just that you want to make sure there are. If you were to make those traits and skills individually selectable/modular, you could always have it draw from a number of points separate from the main character point pool.

G-Flex, remember that every point in a skill in character creation is actually worth 2 in game. Some skills, like those you can pick up from books... maybe not worth it.

Minor correction: That's only true for the first character point. After that, the cost increases very greatly.

On the other hand, I've never really had difficulty learning skills in game - it only takes four days or so to become extremely proficient at whichever problem resolving technique you use most often, half that if you have a high Int and Fast Learner (which I almost always do.) The skills that are harder to get in-game tend to be the same skills books exist for - crafting and so on. Combat especially seems to raise pretty quickly. I'm cool with that.

You might be right. Again, I think my opinion is skewed because I was drawing from experiences with a low-Intelligence character.

I think, character build-wise, there's actually lots of interesting options. Not every combination is viable, but it's fun to fine the ones that work really well. (like starting with a bunch of points in traps and mechanics, and some strength. Mwahaha).

This is true, although the Traits menu will always need to be looked at carefully. Whenever you have an advantage/disadvantage system like that, players will game it for points however they can. For instance, taking "trigger happy" if you have no intention on using automatic firearms anyway, and even "Schizophrenic" doesn't do much (in my experience).

Also, here's a quick list of completely broken things if you ever want the game to get incredibly easy. Pretty much all of these are on the to-fix list, from what I understand:
Integrated Toolset
Stings (Bee and Wasp)
Throwing, especially when combined with stings

The Integrated Toolset does have some issues. Some aspects of it (soldering iron, hot plate, sewing kit, etc.) should require resources but doesn't, and it doesn't work at all outside of the crafting menu. I'd argue that maybe some tools should maybe not be included at all in it (hot plate?).

Getting headshots with thrown objects is hilarious. Rocks are deadly, and once I finished off a zombie by doing pretty significant damage throwing sneakers at its head. Flavor-wise, this is fun (throwing a bunch of your stuff at invading zombies out of desperation is great), but it should probably be a little less powerful!

[Whales]

Well, by making skill sets modular--and independant of character creation points--it allows them to be useful at character creation (since they're free) without just giving the player free skills outright.  By tying equipment to that, it makes the skill sets more meaningful, and gives an extra depth of character differentiation without the exploitable and tedious process of manual item selection.

It's intentional that the integrated toolset is only useful for crafting.  It's not intended as an across-the-board powerhouse of "items you no longer need to carry," but simply as a tool to make crafting much more simple.  Perhaps "Internal Rapid Prototyper" or something would be more appropriate.

[jc6036]

I always did like the idea of some guy sitting in his basement, working on something. He says, "oops, now where did I put that screw driver?" then the tip of his finger pops open and a screw driver pops out. Hilarious, actually.

[G-Flex]

It's intentional that the integrated toolset is only useful for crafting.  It's not intended as an across-the-board powerhouse of "items you no longer need to carry," but simply as a tool to make crafting much more simple.  Perhaps "Internal Rapid Prototyper" or something would be more appropriate.

Yeah, it's not really clear what the integrated toolset is. If you can use it as a hammer-type object for crafting, for instance, why can't you board up two-by-fours with it? There are some incongruities there that I'm not sure are easy to work around, and I think that winds up being counterintuitive to the user. There's really no obvious reason why it would work for crafting and not other things, especially considering the flavor text. I'm not even sure how I'd reflavor it, and I'm not sure that it would necessarily become a "powerhouse" if the tools were more limited. For instance, it's a bit weird that you can heat up food or solder things despite the lack of a power source, and make clothing items without thread.


I'd personally like to see more Traits, too. That's just me, but I'd love to see that list grow, because Traits are fun. Expanding the list and maybe letting the user select four instead of three would be neat.

[FunctionZero]

Can you overdose? Because I can't find any issues with swallowing a whole bottle of codine..

You can, but only with certain things, like Adderall (see NPCs blowing their own heads off) and cocaine. Maybe meth too.

Slight correction. Logic loops are what's causing that, not drug overdose. That's also why we currently don't have NPCs.

[Whales]

I arrived at three traits after playing around and testing it for a while.  I think it allows sufficient flexibility in character creation while preventing extreme min/maxing or over-complex characters.  I could see my way to having one of the professions allowing 4 traits, or possibly just making traits past the third cost increasing numbers of points (or giving you decreasing amounts of points, on the negative side).

[Mechanoid]

On the issue of skill points and buying them:
Please keep the custom skill selection mode in some form.
Even if it is not the primary focus of character creation or has some major draw back, such as not starting with any special items, the ability to create your own character is (as far as i'm concerned) THE BEST PART of Cataclysm. Lots of games use class/profession systems... Sure it's nice to make believe that you're some random bad ass of "Profession _" from the year 20xx, but sometimes it's also fun to create a representation of yourself or other people (Steve Austin to Stephen Hawking) in the game... It's difficult to imagine yourself /someone else as the character you control when you arn't given an option to literally "Be yourself" (or themselves) by way of customized trait/skill selection.

Please allow divisions and alterations within professions.
One of the professions you stated Whales, was "Police Officer" and that they'd start with a pistol, holster, and some policey-skills. But what if someone like me doesn't want to start with a pistol, but still be a "police officer" of sorts? It should be possible to start as a different kind of police officer... I can imagine sub-professions like:
DEA - Starts with an assortment of drugs* but mostly the highly addictive ones.
Detective - Weaker starting pistol but has a better speech skill.
SWAT - Starts with an SMG, but has no speech skill. (SWAT Entry; Shotgun. SWAT Sniper; Rifle.)

The list can go on like this, each one with a slightly different set of skills and starting items. Generally, each should take one aspect of that profession and amplify it into more specialist territory; a doctor profession subset could be "Desk Attendant" that has more speech skill then a normal doctor, or a "Ward Orderly" that has more unnarmed/melee skill. Branch that stuff out and give players options instead of doing what every other game seems to be doing lately by removing options.

* Not expected to actually use the drugs, but trade them to other NPCs... Maybe a faction quest to 'eliminate the drug problem' they've been having, and to turn in the confiscated drugs as proof? Bonus points if you flag the starting drug items so when the player tries to use them in a quest the NPC goes "Don't pull a fast one on me, i know that stuff is yours." ... Ahhh but all of that is far into the future where NPCs actually work.

[G-Flex]

I agree with the above sentiments to some degree. I personally think that flexibility should be reduced only as much as is absolutely necessary. Creating interesting, quirky characters is one of the most fun things about a game like this.

I find it interesting that there's no "farsighted" trait yet, since there are reading glasses which refer to it... I assume that's an upcoming feature, though. I also think encumbrance could also use some work. I think it's actually a little too harsh overall (a lot of clothing slows you down a lot more than it would in the real world), and layering is a little quirky (if I have a jacket/vest and a backpack, wearing a t-shirt underneath it all carries a significant penalty even though it's slightly weird that it does). There are also some bugs/oddities with building layouts and feature placements that I'm sure you also already know about. I'm probably just stating the obvious a whole bunch here, and I apologize if I'm saying junk that's already been discussed at some point.

One feature that I'm not sure I find fun at all is the fact that the world is persistent between characters. I understand the appeal, but in practice, I think it's way too easy to cheese/exploit. I realized this when my nerd found my old tequila-chugging schizo brawler's house. At that moment, I realized that out-of-character knowledge and experience began to greatly affect the way I played, because I knew where that former character's house was, and therefore also knew everything around that house, including anything that prior character had found. That sort of out-of-universe knowledge affecting gameplay generally isn't very fun, because it really takes me out the game in both the sense that it really messes up my playstyle, and that it takes me out of the "RP" aspect and more into a sort of out-of-character metagame. To me, it's the sort of feature that sounds fun and looks great on paper, but doesn't work in practice unless the player himself can somehow forget everything about his previous characters and their exploits.


I think the game has a lot of potential, overall. Traits are a lot of fun, as are the bionics and the style of the gameplay. The fact that I'm having fun with it this early in development certainly says something.

[Whales]

Mechanoid, these are relatively minor variations that you can flesh out over the first couple days of gameplay.  The point of removing skills from character creation is that they're more or less a waste of points that could be better spent elsewhere.  You'll still be creating your own character; but skill selection will be done in a way that's more cohesive and makes sense.  Creating a character like yourself, or whatever model you have in mind, is mainly done in the stats/traits selection, not via skills.

I kind of like the sub-job ideas, though they may be a bit too powerful for starting characters--the idea is still to force lots of scavenging in the early game, and that the profession selection simply provides a little push in one direction or another.

G-Flex, encumbrance is balanced for gameplay more than realism.  WIthout rehashing things that've been covered here and elsewhere extensively, it's designed to make a strong division between the highly-equipped, carry everything, ranged-combat type character, and the light-travelling, fast-moving melee character.

[Drevlin]

One feature that I'm not sure I find fun at all is the fact that the world is persistent between characters.

If you delete the save folder a new world will be generated for the next game

[G-Flex]

The point of removing skills from character creation is that they're more or less a waste of points that could be better spent elsewhere.

Like I said, you could make skill points a separate pool. Not that it's necessarily the best way, or better than what you're doing, but there are other ways to solve the problem.

G-Flex, encumbrance is balanced for gameplay more than realism.  WIthout rehashing things that've been covered here and elsewhere extensively, it's designed to make a strong division between the highly-equipped, carry everything, ranged-combat type character, and the light-travelling, fast-moving melee character.

This is fair. Speaking of encumbrance, though... it seems like backpacks are kind of a no-brainer despite the encumbrance because of how much amazing space they give you. I guess it does limit how much armor you can effectively have on your torso, though... I just hate not being able to carry all kinds of stuff around, but that's just me because I like to hoard things.

[Mechanoid]

I'll make the problem i have with straight-up profession/classes simple:
They just don't account for every desirable starting configuration the player might want.

So instead of professions determining starting abilities, have the starting abilities determine your profession. If you choose a selection of skills that match one of the coded professions, then you get bonus starting equipment to help you along your way. Otherwise all you get are the skills you selected, a combination for which no applicable profession exists; or for which a profession giving additional equipment would be unballanced or totall over-powered, and thus denied from being made more powerful.

To further complicate and intrigue this system, set it up to work like traits do, where you have a number of points to choose which skills you have to start with, and then you can take some penalties to get more points if you want to; a second set of traits, but entirely skill-oriented. For example, "Gun Shy" would be a skill trait penalty that reduces the effective level of and slows down advancement with ALL firearms, and prevents you from crafting, modifying, or repairing any firearms.

Maybe even allow for a skill to be NEGATIVE (limited to -1) which represents an absolute ignorance of what to do in that skill to improve: so that they must read a book to learn that skill, no amount of action can improve it. (with the implication being that if you're illiterate, that skill is perminately disabled) (edit - with a further implication i just realised being that you've locked yourself out of getting a profession that skill is related to; -1 your Speech skill and you can't be a Police Officer, etc)
holy shit disabling a skill on a character from turn 0 i can't believe i'm actually suggesting this what the fuck am i doing

Finally, let the character start the game without perfectly spending every skill point; so that if you really really wanted to, you could start the game with all skills at -1 so you'd be forced to read books. (laffo if you accidentally took illiterate) That way skills can become meaningful representations of who a character is and what they're capable of instead of just some bonus to doing something early on. (you don't want your crafter mule NPC buddy to not be able to repair your guns because GUNSHY skill trait penalty)